#2423 - John Cena

John Cena is a WWE 17-time World Champion wrestler, bestselling author, and actor whose on-screen career includes installments of the “Fast & Furious” franchise, “The Suicide Squad,” and its spinoff series “Peacemaker.”https://www.wwe.com/superstars/john-cena Tony Hinchcliffe is a comedian, writer, actor, and host of the podcast and live show “Kill Tony.” His Netflix special, “Kill Tony: Kill or Be Killed,” is streaming now.www.tonyhinchcliffe.comwww.youtube.com/@killtony Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Get a free welcome kit with your first subscription of AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/joerogan Don’t miss out on all the action - Download the DraftKings app today! Sign-up at https://dkng.co/rogan or with my promo code ROGAN GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, (800) 327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA). Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Please Gamble Responsibly. 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), or visit www.mdgamblinghelp.org (MD). 21+ and present in most states. (18+ DC/KY/NH/WY). Void in ONT/OR/NH. Eligibility restrictions apply. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (KS). Pass-thru of per wager tax may apply in IL. 1 per new customer. Must register new account to receive reward Token. Must select Token BEFORE placing min. $5 bet to receive $200 in Bonus Bets if your bet wins. Min. -500 odds req. Token and Bonus Bets are single-use and non-withdrawable. Token expires 1/11/26. Bonus Bets expire in 7 days (168 hours). Stake removed from payout. Terms: sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Ends 1/4/26 at 11:59 PM ET. Sponsored by DK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The Joe Rogan Experience.

• 0:05Joe Rogan?

  Training by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. There's the Rogan. What's up? John Cena in the fucking house.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  Put these on, yeah.

• 0:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, let's put these on, pretend we're professional. What's up? Good to see you, man.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  Thanks, man. Thanks so much for having me.

• 0:23Joe Rogan?

  My pleasure.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Appreciate you guys for being here.

• 0:24Joe Rogan?

  And there's no way I'm having a pro wrestler on without Tony Hinchcliffe.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 0:28Joe Rogan?

  It is impossible. He's the expert. He knows more about pro wrestling than I know about UFC.

• 0:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Sometimes I translate little things here and there.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  That's cool. It's all right.

• 0:37Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he has to. He has to. And he's a giant fan of yours, too. You know, also a giant fan of yours is Brian Simpson. Brian Simpson was going on last night about how intelligent you are. It was really interesting, you know.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  You sure it was me?

• 0:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, man. Well, you do speak fucking Mandarin, which is kinda crazy.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, yeah.

• 0:55Joe Rogan?

  How long did it take you to learn that?

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Uh, man, I was, I was doing that for quite a long time. I've since kinda, um, kinda declined on the studies. Uh, a wonderful takeaway from the study of Mandarin, um, just because you know a language doesn't mean you know the culture.

• 1:11Joe Rogan?

  Ah.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  So that was a fantastic experience with, but I studied Mandarin for like a decade and I would say like, um, not even conversationally fluent. It was a really tough hill to climb for me.

• 1:22Joe Rogan?

  Well, it seems like a really big hill.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Just, it's, it's just different.

• 1:26Joe Rogan?

  And then even if you can speak it, can you read it?

• 1:29Speaker 02

  No, no, I didn't even bother to read. And, uh, like reading all the characters, understanding everything, yeah.

• 1:35Joe Rogan?

  How long did it take you to learn?

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Uh, around 10 years.

• 1:37Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then like, I mean, I would dream in Mandarin and like have conversations and kick down in that. So it became like a, like a, a second language, but you know, I, I lived in China for a little bit. I filmed a movie with Jackie Chan, so I was there for like six or seven months. I lived there in, um, man, we were in Mongolia, Yenchuan Province, so like, like in China.

• 2:00Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  And, uh, it was fun. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03Joe Rogan?

  You were in Mongolia?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Inner Mongolia, yeah.

• 2:06Joe Rogan?

  What's the difference?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know, cause I've never, I've never been in Mongolia, but Inner Mongolia was, uh, man, I was, I was the only person that looked like me there, uh, and everyone would say, "Look, it's, it's big white guy. Handa Bai Ren, Handa Bai Ren." They would call me.

• 2:20Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:22Joe Rogan?

  Wow, so what motivated you to learn that? It seems like such a task.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Honestly, man, it was, everything in my life seems to be wrestling related. It was wrestling related. Like WWE's reach spread everywhere. I mean, I've been able to, lucky enough to perform everywhere from like Moscow, Philippines, South Africa, Bangor, Maine, every place in between, except China. China was like the one place that didn't understand what we did. So it's literally like, it's a, it's a universal language. Cause you can turn, it's like UFC, like you turn the volume down, but you can see like, oh, this is two guys, best guy wins. I get it. The Chinese just didn't get it. So I figured if like one of our superstars spoke the language, maybe that would help break down the barrier. And we got in for-

• 3:08Joe Rogan?

  Was it your idea?

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Uh, it was my idea, but the WWE offers, and I think they still offer it. They, they offer a free second language program. So like when they rolled out the initiative of like financial advice and, um, you know, they'll pay for portions of your secondary education and free second language. This is like 2011, 2012, big talent meeting in like an auditorium. I'm one of the old guys at the time sitting in the front being like, these kids don't know how good they have it. I should stand up and tell them, I'm like, no, fuck that. I'm actually gonna lead by example and take a language. So I signed up right then, then and there for China, Chinese, cause I wanted to get us into China.

• 3:46Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  And like I said, it worked, but it kinda only worked and they, I think, I think actually right now, China is experiencing what wrestling is to them. Cause like there's, I've read articles that there's promotions over there that are thriving. So like now they get it.

• 4:02Joe Rogan?

  Oh, so they have their own promotions?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:04Joe Rogan?

  And this is a fairly recent thing?

• 4:05Speaker 02

  I think so. I like, I just read recent articles that like pro wrestling is thriving in China and they have their own, like their own way of doing it.

• 4:12Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:14Joe Rogan?

  Wow, that's wild. It's wild how like expansive the pro wrestling business is, that they would be that-

• 4:24Joe Rogan?

  Open minded to say like, let's, let's give second language programs to the athletes.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I just, it's, it's weird. The origins of the business are carnival related. It is like a carnival attraction and then it was like ruthlessly territorial. And then when it became national, it's still trying to find its way. It's almost like you see pro sports doing it. You know, the more a sport succeeds, the more benefits they offer to their competitors and athletes. So, you know, WWE kind of hit that stride. Yeah.

• 4:55Joe Rogan?

  It's just such a smart thing to do.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you give your, give your talent the opportunities to, to gain knowledge and wisdom. And the sad thing is, I don't know how many people did it or do it still, you know?

• 5:08Joe Rogan?

  Was there anybody other than you that you know of?

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Two other people.

• 5:11Joe Rogan?

  Who?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Uh, Claudio Castagnoli, who speaks, I think, four or five languages already. And he just wanted to take like a brush up course and Natty Nighthart.

• 5:21Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:22Joe Rogan?

  That's it. Everybody else is like.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Not gonna do it.

• 5:25Joe Rogan?

  Too much work.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:26Joe Rogan?

  What was the not knowing the culture aspect?

• 5:30Speaker 02

  So, man, I got, I got put in a bit of a hotspot with, um, uh, I, I, I made a, a pact to myself. When I was like, okay, I feel fluent. We would do these global press tours and I just happened to be on a global press tour. And I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna do 70% of my media in Mandarin, like in dialogue. And I gotta say, I did it. Like, I went over there, spoke, people were taking off the translator headphones. Like, life was good. Everything was great. At the very end of the day, as with all these press tours, you do like a bunch of prompter reads. So I'm doing prompter reads for everywhere. And it's like, hey, go to this place and see this movie. Go to this place and see this movie. And no, my bad. I didn't check the reads because it's like an end of a 10 hour day.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  You do a million of these things. And one of them said like, hey, Taiwan, see this, this. And, and the, the, it was all in Mandarin and the opinion described Taiwan as a country. So be the first country to see this. Now, over there, they, they look through a different lens. Like geopolitics are murky waters, man. And that's what, when I learned of like. I just said it, left, everybody was cool, I did my thing, like I read the prompt, it was like a Ron Burgundy moment. Like, go fuck yourself, San Diego, it's like the most offensive thing you can say. So I'm like, man, you know, good job, John, you said, you did 70% and people understood what you were talking about. And then they put that out and everybody was like, what the fuck did you just say?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  We don't, that's not how we do it over here. And again, just because, like, my takeaway, and it was, it was a pretty tense moment for me, like, I had to apologize to China, and in apologizing to China, I pissed off my home country, I'm a patriot, I love the United States of America and everything it stands for, but like, no one, it was never enough, nobody was happy, everybody was fucked up. And it was, it was, it was like murky waters for me personally, and I, it was weird, like, I'm the, I think I might have been the only guy almost to get canceled for doing his homework. You know, like, we're trying to like, learn, like, learn and try to do something, but the cool takeaway, you know, we can learn from every mistake. My mistake was just because you know the language, doesn't mean you know the culture.

• 7:44Joe Rogan?

  Did they even refer to it as Taiwan? I think they referred to it as Chinese Taipei, right?

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Man, what was in the, I know what I read in the thing, so that's, again, I don't know enough depth to know that, and now, like, people are like, oh, man, can you, can you speak Mandarin for this? I just won't do it. It's a skill that I have, and it's, but it's a skill that's gonna remain with me, because it's, I don't understand, I don't have the depth of field to know what to call that place in that region of the world, and I haven't done enough research, and I don't have the wisdom, and I don't have, like, the, the cultural fluency, you know? So it was a cool lesson, it sucked, because I thought I was just trying to do something good, but it was, it was a cool lesson.

• 8:23Joe Rogan?

  Was it really that big of a deal?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Man, I thought, like, I was filming Peacemaker season one, and when they came out with all of this stuff, I went directly to James Gunn, and I was like, hey, man, if you have to fire me, I understand. Wow.

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• 11:27Joe Rogan?

  It was that serious?

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:29Joe Rogan?

  But it wasn't even words that you wrote? Someone else, the WWE wrote it?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  That doesn't, no, no, it was, it was for the movie I was promoting.

• 11:35Joe Rogan?

  Right, so the movie, the people that made the movie wrote it.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  So I don't know, like when you do these press tours, let's say, if I'm doing a movie for Warner Brothers, let's say, let's use Peacemaker as an example, I'm doing a global Peacemaker tour. And we go into China, or we go into South America. You meet like the PR person there. And they have all the stuff you're supposed to do, and they curate your experience, and they hold your hand. You're like, okay, now we're gonna go to this station, then, by the way, they just want you to do some shout outs. So anytime I go anywhere globally now, as much as I wanna thank fans for their attention and, you know, investing in the product, I really shy away from like speaking the language because I don't understand the cultural nuance. You know, I just, I just wanna be like, yo, man, thanks for watching what we do, and I love the fact that you're entertained. But I wanna speak to you at a level that I understand that I'm fluent.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Because your boots on the ground here every day, and I might say something that's a nice gesture, but completely fucking offend you. And that's, that's not good, that's not good for anybody.

• 12:31Joe Rogan?

  So was the teleprompter in English and you would translate to Chinese?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  No, everything was in Mandarin. And in, in Chinese, they have the characters, which are virtually impossible for me to learn. There's like an infinite number. But they have, they also have what's called pinyin, which is, it's kinda spelled out in English with phonetics. So it has the four tones.

• 12:50Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  So if you were to put something in front of me in pinyin right now, I could definitely read it. And I got good at reading pinyin, so I was like, man, I could, I could send all these messages in Mandarin, and then more people will know about this movie, and more people will know about me, and more people will know about wrestling, and more people will be excited. Looked good on paper, just my follow through was a bit weak, you know.

• 13:11Joe Rogan?

  It doesn't even seem like that was your fault.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Right, it's probably a PR's assistant assistant that's type that's probably in charge of doing the grunt work of typing in all the different languages and the different countries. Like it's tedious.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Uh, from, from what I know, I know I'm gonna learn a lot about you guys in this episode, but from what I know about you, you're, you're into looking at, looking things through different lenses and different perspectives. It also could have been somebody being like, I'm gonna get this kid.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  But here's the thing, I, I do appreciate you saying like, it's not your fault. That's not true. It was my fault. And I think that's when I can start to work on like, well, what did I learn from this? And I could easily blame a PR, an assistant. I could say somebody had a target on my back, all that stuff. I fucked up.

• 13:57Joe Rogan?

  Did you suspect that somebody might have set you up?

• 14:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 14:01Joe Rogan?

  Well, you're saying it like it's a possibility.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Well, man, when it happened, every, every theory came, like, here's the thing, the world doesn't revolve around me, but my little world, everybody was like, they fucked up? They did this on purpose? I was like, well, first of all, who's they? So I was able to kind of eliminate all that. And once I realized I could still go on working, uh, I, I really made a lot of people angry and for that, that I'm sorry, like, again, I was just trying to.

• 14:27Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy, just by saying that Taiwan's a country.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  In, in Chinese, though.

• 14:32Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  You know, like, those are murky waters to begin with. You know, like, I, I'm not even thoroughly fluent on the US policy. I think it's like, like territorial ambiguity or some shit like that. Like, it's, it's so weird and it's, it's so fragile and I, I, uh, I got into some water I shouldn't have been swimming in. But that's, that's on me. It's not, it was my fault. And, and I think that's important for me to bear the burden of that and be like, yo, what, how can I course correct? What did I learn? Who do I really, really genuinely have to apologize for offending? The, the biggest thing that was a kick to the nuts is when like, people stateside got pissed off.

• 15:11Joe Rogan?

  Because you apologized?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Yes, in, in Chinese. And, and I understand it, I mean, completely like, bowing down to the demand of this, that, gosh, what a, what a shitty move by me. Like, I just, I should have taken a breath. Again, what did I learn? Don't be reactive. Take a breath, find out what's going on. Find out the best path of action, maybe give it a few days, maybe give it a hot second. And then move forward. But immediately I was like, oh, they're mad. You want us to do this? Fine, no problem. I'll fix it right now. Man, not only did I not try to fix the hole in the boat, I sunk the Titanic. So it was, but again, it was a learning experience.

• 15:52Joe Rogan?

  Well, it speaks to your character that you don't blame anybody else because I'd blame everybody else. I'd be like, who fucking wrote that?

• 16:00Joe Rogan?

  Don't you, don't you know what you're saying or what you're making me say?

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Uh, the, the release you guys have for the show, I, I read it and.

• 16:08Joe Rogan?

  You might be the only person.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  So that was, that was whoever handed it to me, that was what they said. Like, I think you might be the only person that's ever read it.

• 16:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Man, if, if, if you're gonna, if you're gonna take liberties with me, at least I want to be able to read that you are.

• 16:20Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? And I can't say I'm perfect with doing that, but like, I was handed a release. I'm like, oh man, can I just glance this over for, oh, this says what I think it says. Okay, let's go.

• 16:29Joe Rogan?

  Trump didn't even read it.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Tweets their own?

• 16:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, no, it's very smart of you to read it. You know, who, who knows, you know?

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Who knows?

• 16:43Joe Rogan?

  So this is, Tony, is this, is this the full trifecta now? It's like if you've gotten all of your heroes on this podcast now?

• 16:50Speaker 03

  There's a couple more we can knock off out of the pro wrestling world. There's a couple more.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Todd, let's, if, if you don't mind, if I can indulge, talk pro wrestling heroes. Who, who do we need to knock off?

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, in all reality, and it's a diabolical, diabolical.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Cause man, he can, he can kind of invite, you can't, you can invite anyone you want in here. You just kind of gotta get them to wishlist.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  I mean, you gotta, you gotta start with the number one without a doubt, Vince McMahon, who started this gangster shit and spread it around.

• 17:19Joe Rogan?

  I would definitely have him.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  It was a little.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Man, I.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  He would be great.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  I, whatever magic you have out there and you have a lot of gravity.

• 17:28Joe Rogan?

  Do you think he'd be interested in doing it?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Are you kidding me? I think he would love it.

• 17:32Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  I think he would love it. I, I don't know when the right time is. But man, don't, don't miss out on that album. At least, at least send it out to the universe.

• 17:41Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, well, I would definitely, Vince, if you're listening.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Vince, if you're listening.

• 17:45Joe Rogan?

  Let's go.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  I think this would be a great, I think this experience would be a great one for you.

• 17:49Joe Rogan?

  Is he still involved? Is he out, is he in? He's out.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  He's out.

• 17:53Joe Rogan?

  He's out totally.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 17:55Joe Rogan?

  It seems like he's a guy that'll be out for a little while and then something will happen that'll bring him back in.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  No, well, I don't know. Again, that's, that's way, we were talking about like, why is your last event in this place? I'm like, man, because I don't choose the events. Like, I don't, all that stuff is so far above me. But I know now, he's out. I, in my eyes, I, I'd like to think that like, time heals everything and I believe in forgiveness. And I also believe in like, looking at the body of work, but I also, I also know there's a lot of fragile stuff going on there. I don't know, I don't know, man, I don't know.

• 18:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's a hot subject. It could get us into another Chinese Taipei incident.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Well, no, no, man, I'm, I'm, again, I've learned to become a little bit more accountable for, for what I say. And just how, just because I feel a certain way about a person doesn't exonerate them from being accountable for their actions.

• 18:48Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  And just because he did start quote unquote, "all this gangster shit", that doesn't, that doesn't mean he doesn't need to be accountable for his actions. So let's, let's figure out what that means and then figure out if we can, if we can move forward and, and, and bring that back in the fold. Or if, if it stays the way it is.

• 19:07Joe Rogan?

  What do you think, Tony? You think he's coming back?

• 19:09Speaker 02

  I think he would come here.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think he would come here too. And I think he, you know, that's one of the more entertaining people of all time. He created the entire universe. You gotta remember, Hogan's Hogan because of him, Cena's Cena because of him. Yeah, every single Stone Cold, he's like, "That sounds good. Yeah, keep it going. We'll do the glass breaks thing and they'll throw you beers. I like it, let's do it again next week." So everything that we think.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  When he sits here, you gotta do that impression.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, yeah, Stone Cold's another one that hasn't been on.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Steve would be great. I think you would, you would dig Steve.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. He lives out here too, doesn't he? Yep.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Does he?

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Well, actually, no. Doesn't he have a ranch out here? I think he does somewhere.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  I think he does.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think he's based out of somewhere else now, New Mexico or Arizona. He's on the, he like, he's like, kind of cool and reclusive. He like, doesn't really do a lot. It's amazing.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  He would be a good get. And I'm pretty sure, I guarantee you would do it.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Steve, if you're, I know you're watching. Come on. Come on, come on in. Let's talk, let's talk some wrestling.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  The man. I mean, everyone has him on the, you know, the Mount Rushmore. Uh, Triple H, who runs it now, the son-in-law of Vince McMahon.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  I mean, he runs the entire thing.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  I mean, you want, you want answers to those high-level questions.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  There's your guy.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  That's the guy you need to get in. A lot of the stuff you'll probably, you'd probably ask today. I'd be like, that's way above my pay grade.

• 20:33Joe Rogan?

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• 21:18Joe Rogan?

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• 21:45Joe Rogan?

  The welcome kit, a morning person hat, a bottle of vitamin D3 K2, and an AG1 flavor sampler for free with your first subscription. That's over a hundred dollars in free gifts. Just head over to drinkag1.com/joerogan or visit the link in the description to get started. Well, you know, if you don't know the history, Tony at one point in time was offered a job with the WWE before he really made it.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  No way.

• 22:11Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was offered a job to write for the WWE. Because, you know, Tony was a giant pro wrestling fan. And, you know, he'd already had a Netflix special. So he was known as a comic.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  It was before that.

• 22:24Joe Rogan?

  Was it before the Netflix special?

• 22:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:25Joe Rogan?

  The first one? The one that you released yourself?

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:28Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was only a couple of years into me doing stand-up, like seven nights a week at the Comedy Store all the time. And somehow I ended up, someone's like, hey, I have a friend in WWE. If you want to have a meeting with them and just talk. And I went in with straight up ideas. This, that, the Undertaker's brother comes back again, this, that. The next, like, everything, back and forth. I can't even remember any of them. It's been so long. But I went in with the whole thing. And this guy's like, where the hell did you, like, what? Oh, this is crazy. You just, like, did this? I'm like, yeah, I found out a couple of days ago we were gonna talk, so. But, yeah, they offered it. But I would have had to move to Connecticut and take a train to New York every night to go do stand-up. And that would have just been exhausting. And everything I heard, because Patrice O'Neal,

• 23:13Speaker 03

  the late, great Patrice O'Neal, wrote for WWE for a while.

• 23:16Joe Rogan?

  Did he really?

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, for like a couple of years, I think.

• 23:19Joe Rogan?

  What did he, just wrote lines for them? Like, what did he do?

• 23:22Speaker 03

  The whole shebang. When you're a WWE writer, they, they make you write. It's not like a cute job at all.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  No, there's a lot of, there's a lot of television. Or there's a lot of content every week.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Right now, I think they got, they have three weekly shows. So that's 20, I think one of them's going back to three hours, 16. It's like 50 segments of TV.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Every week.

• 23:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but I remember when you were talking about it.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  When you're talking about potentially doing it, I was like.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was tricky.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  And I was like, dude, you do not want to live in Connecticut.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  No, that's the main thing. If it was anywhere else other than Connecticut, it kind of would have made more sense. If it was in New York City, it would have been a no brainer. If it was in LA, definitely.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  But like, fast forward, now you're more and more involved.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Well, this is the crazy thing. Like, we had talked, like, during the old days, like, we would talk in the green room. I'd be like, that would be your ultimate dream job.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Like, to make it as a comedian and somehow be involved in the UFC the way, or, excuse me, in WWE, the way I'm involved in the UFC, like, very similar.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's crazy. It's insane. I'm going tomorrow night, I'm gonna be in the front row at the arena in my hometown.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Are they here tomorrow night? Oh, man.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  Are you messing with me? Are you gonna, is your music gonna hit?

• 24:40Speaker 02

  No, I'm not there. I'm, I got one more left.

• 24:42Speaker 03

  This is what they do, by the way.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah?

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, this is, oh, I didn't even know they were gonna be in town.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  He's correct. There's a lot of, you mess with people, you're right. But then, somebody like me will actually shoot you straight and be like, I'm not gonna be there, and I won't be there, and you'll be like, ah, now, I'm just, I'm building the equity for people to mess with people.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Like, I'm giving 20, 20 mulligans out there.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  Tomorrow.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Never, no, not a chance.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. I heard a great story, you'll probably love this, you might even know this story, but, The Undertaker, his wife, and his podcast co-host went to WrestleMania, they're up in a fancy suite. This was, um, which one was it? The Rock main appearance, where, did you, yes, you were there, right? There's, that huge finish at WrestleMania, like, three years ago. Where it was just boom, boom, boom, boom. And all these legends were coming out, this huge finish, just, like, they, they can't even, like, follow it. The ultimate climax of a WrestleMania. And one wrestler comes out, interrupts this huge main event, and then another one, then another one. Anyway, The Undertaker, his wife, and his podcast co-host were up in the suite. Undertaker goes, I'm gonna go use the restroom. They're like, he's been gone a while.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  The lights go out, the bell tolls, they're watching from the suite, he's been gone for, like, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, he went and changed real quick, and then now he's.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Came out as The Undertaker.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, came out as The Undertaker. They're in the suite like, oh my god, it's The Undertaker. Like, they don't tell anybody. It's so old school and awesome that they keep secrets so locked up that their own loved ones, his wife, didn't even know.

• 26:12Joe Rogan?

  That's hilarious. That is so crazy.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  It's fun to be able to surprise a live audience.

• 26:18Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's gotta be a big part of it. How did you get involved in pro wrestling? Were you a fan as a kid and then?

• 26:25Speaker 02

  I sure was. I think we have the same gravity of like, man, I was a super fan as a kid. But then I fell out of it, admittedly, kinda when Hogan went to WCW. So like, I was into wrestling and then I wasn't. Then I got into sports or whatever. And then I got back into wrestling when everyone else did. When like Stone Cold Steve Austin became big, The Rock became big, the Attitude Era hit. And I was just working a dead-end job over at Gold's Gym Venice and like, didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

• 26:56Joe Rogan?

  How old were you?

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Twenty-one.

• 26:59Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Twenty-one. I'd moved out to California, not to be famous or anything. My degree was in Kines. And I wanted to, like, that was the center of the fitness universe in 99, 2000. So like, all equipment manufacturers were there. I'm like, man, I'll go get a job with Hammer Strength or Cybex or like, maybe Gold's or like, put that piece of paper on the wall to like, get a good paying job. It did not work. So I ended up like, front desk, cleaning toilets, selling protein bars, in that order. So don't ever buy a protein bar. I'm just kidding. But no, I was kinda like a jack-of-all-trades over there. And a friend of mine, Chris Bell and Mark Bell.

• 27:37Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I know those guys.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. They literally were like, dude, you talk about WWF all the time. You know, we train down in Orange County. And at that time, Chris Bell was kinda like writing for this promotion. They're like, would you wanna do it? And I, man, I, that doesn't happen without them accidentally saying like, yo, we train to do this.

• 27:57Joe Rogan?

  His documentaries are fucking incredible. Bigger, Stronger, Faster. And then the other one, the pill one, what was that one called?

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Magic Pill?

• 28:04Joe Rogan?

  No, what was the one, the addiction one? Uh, that Chris released. But um, Bigger, Stronger, Faster is such a fucking great documentary.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  The Bell family, I've been, I've been friends with them for a long time.

• 28:15Joe Rogan?

  Great guys.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:16Joe Rogan?

  That, that documentary like blew the lid off of like the reality of steroids. Prescription thugs. That's another great one. Yeah. Crazy thing is, he got addicted to pills while he was doing that. Cause he had surgery while he was doing that and got addicted to pills while he's making a fucking documentary on people being addicted to pills. That's how potent pills are. A guy making a documentary about addiction. He just thinks, well, I'm just taking these because I got hip surgery and I'm in, in fucking agony. And then gets hooked. Like, that's how crazy it is.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're strong.

• 28:52Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I would imagine.

• 28:56Joe Rogan?

  Did you ever have an issue?

• 28:57Speaker 02

  No, no, as a matter of fact, uh, I've, I've had fusion in my neck, right peck, completely detached, reattached, both triceps reattached, uh, both triceps scoped.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Nose relocated, like I, I got, I probably, I'm in like 10 physical surgeries where they gotta go and correct something. Never taken one, uh, pain pill.

• 29:20Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  I have all the prescriptions in the bottom drawer of my house filled. And, and it's weird because at every facility, the first thing they, the first hill they climb is pain management. You wake up from anesthesia, you're like gray and murky. And I've been in a bunch of surgeries, a bunch of different facilities. The protocol's always the same. Do you want something for the pain? Here, we gotta make sure you take this with you because you're not in any pain.

• 29:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Like, I, I understand because you, if you leave, if you're feeling okay, maybe you're high off adrenaline, I don't know. And then the operation sets in of like, holy fuck, this is a 10 out of 10. I can't, I need something. I get that. But I, I guess from falling down and hurting my body a lot, like I know my pain threshold.

• 30:05Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  And when I, the, the worst one was probably the putting the whole peck back on and then attaching it. But when I woke up, I was able to like mess around with a stress ball and I never took one pill.

• 30:17Joe Rogan?

  That's amazing.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  And I, I still have the, the full bottles of like, some are labeled two thousand and eight is when I had my first surgery. And they're just all there.

• 30:25Joe Rogan?

  There's a lot of people listening right now going, what if they're still good?

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Count them all.

• 30:28Joe Rogan?

  What if they're still good? You gotta find out. Gotta find out where John Cena's tours him.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was weird because the, the medical staff couldn't, couldn't believe it. Like they're like, you don't want anything. No, because man, it's a, I know how I am with this.

• 30:41Joe Rogan?

  It's, yeah, it's a fucking slippery road.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  And I would just, I'd be high on opiates, opioids all the time.

• 30:47Joe Rogan?

  I got my first knee surgery, I think in ninety-three or ninety-four and they gave me, I got an ACL reconstruction. And they gave me Vicodin, I think, pretty sure it was Vicodin. I took one, one day and I felt so stupid. I was lying in, lying on my couch, watching TV and I felt so dumb and my knee still hurt. You know, it was just like, it was distracting me from the fact that my knee hurt. But I'm like, I can't be this dumb. I'm dumb enough as it is. I can't add to my dumbness with pills. Like, I just saw it coming. You know, and also I knew a bunch of guys who had pill problems. I wound up selling my pills to a friend of mine that would sell pills.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Gosh, I should have taken your idea. Could have made some, could have made some cash.

• 31:30Joe Rogan?

  I only made like a couple hundred bucks or something. I don't even remember, it was like in the nineties, but, but I remember just that one pill. And so then every surgery I've had ever since then, they always offered me stuff and I never took anything. I got my other ACL reconstructed in two thousand and three, never took anything. I got my nose fixed and it's like two thousand and eight, I got my nose reconstructed, deviated septum.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:53Joe Rogan?

  The guy was insisting that I, he gave me two prescriptions for pain medicine. And I was like, I don't want anything. I was like, is it gonna get worse than this? He's like, it could get. I go, right now it feels like nothing.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:03Joe Rogan?

  It's like, but if you've been, again, like you, you've been beaten up so many times, your body, you're so used to just be- Being in pain, and I think for some people, just the daunting anxiety of pain itself is like they just want a pill before they even realize like, I could kind of just, yeah, it sucks, but it's not gonna suck forever. It's gonna heal. So let's just deal with the suck and just lay here. Put some ice on it or whatever and just relax.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  And along with that, it's kind of like your, your body's natural way of saying like, okay, maybe push a little bit more. Try to get a few more degrees of range of motion in physical therapy. And like, if, if those senses are numbed.

• 32:44Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  And like shut off.

• 32:46Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  First of all, you, you do feel just like, I don't want to do anything. So you won't work, in many cases, you won't work to do the work to get better, to get yourself. Or.

• 32:55Joe Rogan?

  You're just numb.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  You don't know the messaging. You can't listen to your body. Like if it's really, really in pain, maybe it's, maybe your body's trying to tell you something. I don't know.

• 33:03Joe Rogan?

  I always assume that people feel pain differently. I mean, I just would imagine, like, like people feel hot sauce differently. Like some people, they can't have any spice. Some people fucking can have like, you know, death peppers and they're fine.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  So all right, I'll throw that out to the group. Is pain a personal experience?

• 33:21Speaker 03

  I mean, there's no way I'm as tough as you guys. So yeah, it has to be.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  But I think in other dimensions, you might be way tougher. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. I think there's something.

• 33:32Joe Rogan?

  You don't know Tony.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  I can't imagine the dimension. I went and visited a firehouse the other day and I was going down the pole going, wee. Like you guys wouldn't do that.

• 33:41Joe Rogan?

  I would do that.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  So, so in that, in that aspect, you're tougher than me.

• 33:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, you could take ridicule. And we could take ridicule really easily. But I, I don't know how, what it feels like for other people. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I would assume that everybody feels the same. But you know, one of the reasons why I think maybe it is like, it's different, but because my mom, my mom has a crazy tolerance to pain. Like my guy who, my stem cell guy in LA, my mom had a real knee issue and he was treating her as well. And he goes, it's hilarious. Your mother's just like you. She just takes it. Like she doesn't even flinch. She's sticking it like, he's like, that doesn't happen with like 75 year old ladies. Like take a needle and shove it into their knee and, and push it and she just doesn't move.

• 34:26Joe Rogan?

  And you know, she's like, oh, it wasn't painful. It was no big deal. It's like, you know, a lot of 75 year old ladies would be fucking sweating and freaking out and seeing the needle.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Pretty sure I would be. Yeah.

• 34:37Joe Rogan?

  But I I I don't know, you know, I don't know what it feels like to other people. Like when I got my ACL, my right ACL reconstructed, it was a lot easier because it was a cadaver and I recommend it to anybody. The difference between a patella tendon graft recovery and a cadaver recovery is literally like six months. The difference is.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Really?

• 34:56Joe Rogan?

  The cadaver was so much quicker.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 34:59Joe Rogan?

  Oh, my God, because the cadaver, they take it, I mean, it's all swollen and everything afterwards, but it's somebody else's tendon. They take an Achilles tendon off of a cadaver, so it's a hundred and fifty percent stronger than an ACL. They fucking screw that sucker in place, little tiny orthoscopic holes, not nearly as invasive. And then five days later, you know, Matt Lichtenberg, I went to his party for his birthday party, five days later, just walking around. And he was like, did you just have surgery? I go, yeah, it's like, it's not that big a deal.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Man.

• 35:27Joe Rogan?

  Like, it feels fine. You know, it's it was so much easier. The left one was brutal. Cause they take a slice out of your patella tendon and then they could take a chunk out of your shin bone and a chunk out of your kneecap. And then they use those to screw this new tendon that they created into the shin bone and into your thigh bone. That was rough. That one was painful as fuck and it took a long time before it felt normal. It took a long time before I could go down on one knee again.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  When was that?

• 35:55Joe Rogan?

  Those were in the nineties.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  And then the other one was?

• 35:57Joe Rogan?

  Two thou- early two thousands, two thousand like two-ish, somewhere around two, three.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  I mean, ten more years of performing surgeries, ten more years of medical.

• 36:06Joe Rogan?

  I just think it's the diff- cause they still do that patella tendon graft and I think George St. Pierre had it done that way. I know a bunch of people that I'm friends with had it done that way and I was like, oh, don't do that one.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:17Joe Rogan?

  Do the cadaver. But people are worried like, what if you get AIDS? Like, you know, Jesus Christ, you're not gonna get AIDS from it, stop. And it's also, it's like, you feel better before you are better, unfortunately, because the way the tendon works. So when they replace a tendon with a cadaver, it's not like you have this guy's tendon in your body. What it is like is that tendon is a scaffolding and then your body re-proliferates that with your own cells. So over the course of six months, my body had. Filled in all of what used to be a cadaver with my own cells. So you have, you, you, you'll feel like it's better before it's better. So a lot of MMA fighters, they, they start training too quickly and they blow it out again.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Man.

• 37:02Joe Rogan?

  Cause it's still soft.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  That's always the concern.

• 37:05Joe Rogan?

  It's always.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  In, in any, you feel good.

• 37:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Man, I can, I can do this.

• 37:10Joe Rogan?

  Especially animals, you know, guys who are just used to pain and used, and used to pushing, you know, and they just pop it out again. I know multiple MMA fighters that have had knee surgery and then blew it out while they were recovering.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  And just a few months more, they could just.

• 37:26Joe Rogan?

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• 38:08Joe Rogan?

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• 38:48Joe Rogan?

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• 39:29Joe Rogan?

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• 39:44Speaker 02

  All right, it's impatience. You want to get back in there.

• 39:47Joe Rogan?

  And then it's even worse because you got to drill into the same holes and pull it out and open you up. And it's more invasive surgery. They got to remove the screws and fuck. Yeah, but I just, I don't think everybody feels pain the same. I think it's a genetic thing. I'm, I'm, it's just an assumption, obviously, because I don't feel what other people feel. But I think some people, just any kind of pain, it's just they can't function. They're, they're just in agony. And I think those people are way more vulnerable to the pills. That's just my assumption.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  That's a decent perspective. I definitely, I, I would agree with, pain is, is a, is a personal experience. Like there, there are people who,

• 40:30Speaker 02

  I mean, I've seen people like, I can't believe you go through that. And then people will be like, but you get the shit kicked out of you. I can't believe you do that. It's all, it's all relative. I would, I would be shitting cuff links if you get that stem cell needle out. I would be sweating right until the fucking final moment, like some, some stuff I can't take, you know? So I guess it is, it could be combined with like what we fear in life or maybe. Maybe fear of hard work or fear of effort, who knows, I don't know, I don't know.

• 40:57Joe Rogan?

  I think it's also being accustomed to pain, you know, so if you, did you wrestle when you were younger?

• 41:03Speaker 02

  No, I played football.

• 41:04Joe Rogan?

  You played football, well, that's just like that, in that you're always in pain. I mean, if you're playing football, you're always colliding with people, you're always, you got your shoulders fucking with you, your backs fucking with you, it's like, it's never ending.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  I've, I've always said that there's something, there's some value into losing a fight.

• 41:21Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Like, I grew up with four brothers and we kicked the shit out of each other, and I'm, I, I was not always on the winning side. So, very early on in my life, as a young person, you know what it's like to lose a fight.

• 41:31Joe Rogan?

  Oh, it's very valuable.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  And I think that that's, there's a lot maybe to do with the pain conversation there, of like, just flat out getting your ass kicked and then being able to dust yourself off and be like, I'll get you next time, you know, like, it's not over, you know what I'm saying?

• 41:44Joe Rogan?

  Right, right, right.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  We're brothers, we're gonna fight again, you know, like.

• 41:46Joe Rogan?

  It's also knowing, like, why did he beat me, what can I do to beat him next time? You know, like, if you don't have that in your life, also, if you don't know what it feels like to get your ass kicked, you get a little mouthy. I mean, how many mouthy people do we know that have never been fucked up? And I think that's why, like, there's real consequences if it actually comes down, you start yelling and you get mouthy. If it actually comes down to it, and we've all seen many of these videos on the internet where someone just don't, they don't know what the fuck they're asking for, what they're getting into, and then all of a sudden, they're getting hit.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  And man, I, I'm not perfect, and there are days where I'm short of patience, but when it gets to that weird spot of like, yo, someone's gonna get hit in the face, I always try to, like, lean on diplomacy.

• 42:29Joe Rogan?

  Always, always, yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Please, let's not do that, cause that fucking sucks.

• 42:33Joe Rogan?

  And I bet a lot of people say to you, "If I was you, I'd be fucking everybody up." That's, dumb people always say that, like, it doesn't end with that. Then this guy gets his brother, or he shoots you, or he runs you over with a car.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Or you think you're gonna fuck somebody up and you get fucking handled.

• 42:48Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Like, you never know, man, you never know anybody else's story. You know? You never know.

• 42:54Joe Rogan?

  There's so many people out there that train today, it's so much different than when I was younger, like, you would assume that, like, I assume that a good, solid 10% of all men you meet have martial arts skills now. Because of the UFC.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Popularity of it.

• 43:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Certainly, certainly in, in, uh, western society.

• 43:11Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  You know, the gym, there's a gym every plaza.

• 43:14Joe Rogan?

  Also, there's so many kids that like, watch UFC and then play, practice with themselves. And you could learn a lot just doing that. You know, guys learn a lot just watching it on TV and then emulating it at home with their friends.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Can tell those who watch WWE, because when those moments happen, they try to do some crazy move.

• 43:30Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Doesn't work, doesn't.

• 43:32Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah. How many guys have fucking thrown their buddy onto a conference table? Because they thought, they thought it was the way to do it.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Oh, it's crazy.

• 43:40Joe Rogan?

  You know, I mean, the fucking sheer amount of punishment you guys put yourself through is staggering. I mean, it really is staggering.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  But, uh, thank you very much. Uh, it is, is all for the, like, it's like a, a pro football player, pro hockey player, UFC. I think, I think the beautiful advantage that we have is that it's, we can, we can make choices on what we do. So, when you're in UFC and they close the door, it's kind of fucking, best person wins. You know, you've got, it's, it's survival. When we're in WWE and we both step in the ring and they ring the bell, we're working together. Working together to put on the best show for the audience. And in that process, you can calculate the risks you want to take.

• 44:20Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  And I think that's what allows somebody to be able to perform for 23 years. You know, I, I don't know, I know that, that, um, age-old stat that everybody says about like, the average NFL career is what? Two and a half years or three and a half years? I don't know what the stat is on average UFC career. Like, how long, what, what's your window to be functionally profitable in UFC? But I know because our risks are calculated and we're working together rather than against each other, the math is, is way higher for you to have like, a 10, 15, 20-year career in WWE. But that also is. Ten more years of falling down, fifteen more years of falling down.

• 45:02Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  It's weird, like you can choreograph the risk, but you have to do it time and time again. And, and the schedule in WWE just changed. Like, to do seventy matches a year now in WWE is like, man, you, you're a workhorse. We used to do two hundred and twenty, two hundred and thirty.

• 45:18Joe Rogan?

  Which is so crazy.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  It's, it.

• 45:20Joe Rogan?

  Two hundred and twenty days of trauma in a year. Cause you're getting, no matter what, you're getting some trauma. No matter what.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  It is.

• 45:28Joe Rogan?

  A body body slams you, something hap- you're colliding, you go off the ropes, you're smashing into each other.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  I get such a warm feeling when, uh, first timers go into the ring for the first time. It's like, oh, it's like a, it's like a bouncy floor and they fall down once and like the wind's knocked out of them. They're like, my brain moved. Yeah, yeah. Now you gotta do that again and again. But it's weird, I've, I've, I've gotten to work with a lot of standups. And WWE is kinda changing. I, I would say it's on the progression of a standup making it to just like a stadium tour. But man, when I performed, my sweet spot, we ran very parallel lives. Like you, I've worked every city, Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom to Madison Square Garden. Like to the Saetama Super Arena, to AT&T Stadium, to Bangor, Maine, or to Valparaiso, Indiana. Like you, you go to all of these places.

• 46:19Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  And it's like, Friday, you're in one place, Saturday, you're in another place, Sunday, you're in another place, Monday, you're in another place, Tuesday, you're in another place. One day to drop your shit, one day to catch your flight out, do it again. Like it's, it's, it's kinda, we, we're kinda like touring standups in that regard.

• 46:34Joe Rogan?

  Very similar.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:35Joe Rogan?

  Except.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  And you're, you're responsible for your own trans, like, and I'm speaking from my day. I don't know how it is now, cause I got one left and then I'm done. But, uh, you were responsible for your own transportation, booking your own hotels, like you, you were, they were just like, hey, we're starting here, running here, good luck. Which is awesome, because you create, people are really independent when they, when they go through that fire. And you weed out the people who don't want to be there.

• 46:58Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, because they're just a sheer work, the sheer workload.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  Making those clubs and like making, doing a tour.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Also the adrenaline, like, it's like, what do you do after a night?

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Most jobs, people can't wait to be done and then go home and relax and fall asleep. Or if you're doing stand-up or obviously wrestling, you were just...

• 47:17Speaker 02

  You're done late at night and you're like,

• 47:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  "Man, what the water rush."

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  "Fuck, what can I do better? This fucking killed." And then it's four in the morning.

• 47:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, you're buzzing.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:26Joe Rogan?

  You're buzzing. And it's also, it's really hard to have any kind of a normal relationship, because you're just constantly not home. You're constantly gone. Like even your friends, like you get, you really, as a touring comic, the best thing that I ever did is start taking friends with me on the road.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:43Joe Rogan?

  Instead of just working with like random guys that I didn't know in different towns. Those are fun sometimes, sometimes, like, you know? Two out of 10 times, you meet a new friend.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:53Joe Rogan?

  Eight out of 10 times, you're with some annoying alcoholic who, you know, who fucking sucks and, and they're annoying and then they want to take you someplace and, you know, you get in trouble.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, that, that's certainly the, the normal life aspect of it. It's also, like, at full tilt, it's a, it's a very absorbing thing. It's a very selfish thing. So I think not only you don't work regular office hours and you're a nomad, a gypsy, but especially from a WWE perspective, you, you have to, like, you're, you're a startup founder. You have to wake up thinking about it. You have to think about it all day. You have to go to sleep thinking about it. Wake up in, in the two hours of sleep that you get being like, "I remember this line," or "Maybe we can do this stunt," or whatever.

• 48:39Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  And it's people who are in your sphere, at least through my perspective and my journey. Man, if you were in my gravity from like 2002 to like 2019...

• 48:53Speaker 02

  I wasn't a part of a team. You did it my way. Like, bus leaves at ten. If you're there at ten oh one, you are fucking left. Like, we're doing this, and we're training here, and then we're doing this, but it's, it's so, it's so the end product is good. So like, the dream job of like, man, I never, the, the six-year-old kid holding the paper belt can be an adult, holding the real belt and get shekels for doing that. And I don't ever wanna, I don't wanna put that in jeopardy. So you fuckers are gonna have to get in line, and we're just gonna have to go. Like, you, you know, I, I, I was absent a lot in relationships. Because if it wasn't on my terms, it didn't exist. You know, because here, you got, you, you catch lightning out of a jar. I'm a kid from West Newbury, who's, you know, come from a family of five, and

• 49:35Speaker 02

  we, there's always more broke, but man, we were a good level of broke. And then now, like, hey, if you just work hard at this thing, you can kinda not ever be that again. Alright, fuck this, I'm doing this thing all the time. But that comes with, hey, I'm getting married, or like, my grandfather died, or I got a birthday coming up, or like, hey, man, you missed another Thanksgiving. You're damn right I did, cuz I'm doing the thing.

• 50:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  You know, so that it's all, for me at least, it was, it was that as well, of like, laser focus, all things WWE.

• 50:09Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's that in everything that you do where you wanna really be successful.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  It takes, saying yes to the thing means no to everything else.

• 50:19Joe Rogan?

  I had Jensen Huang on the podcast the other day, who's the CEO of Nvidia. And like, one of the biggest companies on planet Earth, huge company. Fucking dude still to this day works seven days a week. And he was talking about when he goes on vacation, I go, do you go on vacation and just put it all down? He goes, no, I work. He goes, even when I'm with my family, I have to work. I'm working. I work seven days a week. I don't take a day off. I love it. And he goes, and I'm terrified of failure. He goes, that's my motivation, my motivation is not, I want to succeed. My motivation is fear of failure.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:53Joe Rogan?

  Every day, I show up saying, if I don't do this, we could fail, and I'm gonna work seven days a week. Everybody thinks they wanna be a CEO, you think you wanna be a billionaire, like- You want to do that? You want to do that when you're 60 years old? Do you want to be working seven days a week? All day long from the moment you wake up? He wakes up at 4:30 in the morning? He says he answers thousands of emails a day? I'm like, what? How are you? How is that even fucking possible? Gets up at 4:30 in the morning? Answers all these emails? Works all day long? Constantly problem solving? Making AI chips? Fucking crazy, right?

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:27Joe Rogan?

  But that's with everything. You want to be at the top of the heap?

• 51:30Speaker 02

  When you see mastery. Yeah. When you see something difficult look easy? There's a bunch of 4:30 in the morning wakeups that made that happen. You know?

• 51:40Joe Rogan?

  I think with everything in life.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:42Joe Rogan?

  Anything in life where you really want to excel at it? There's no shortcuts.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:46Joe Rogan?

  Doesn't exist. That weeds a lot of people out.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  It does. It does. And there's a lot of, man, armchair quarterback is the easiest and best position on the field.

• 51:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Ah, I could do that. All I needed to do is do this. Sure, go right ahead.

• 51:58Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Take your best shot.

• 52:00Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, good luck.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:01Joe Rogan?

  It's in, it's interesting because it must weed out so many talented people. There's probably a lot of talented people that you've seen over the years that just didn't have that drive to constantly improve and succeed and really be thinking about what they're doing all the time.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  I, I like that statement because I think the talent is doing it all. You could, you could have a...

• 52:22Joe Rogan?

  No, you got one. You, you could smoke if you want. I don't care.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Smoke if you're behind him, we're going down.

• 52:26Joe Rogan?

  We have fans in here.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, we have fans that suck out all the smoke.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Okay. I think the, the statement of, um, man, so many talented people didn't make it. They may have, they may be an acrobat.

• 52:36Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  They may be a fast talker. But that's not the only attribute that makes one special. Uh, you may be a great joke writer, but man, if, if you don't master stage presence, I mean, be a joke, a great joke writer with stage presence, but if you can't lug the tour.

• 52:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  You're not, you're not talented for it.

• 52:56Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's, it's really the grind.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  It is.

• 52:58Joe Rogan?

  In everything.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  The all encompassing thing. So when someone with great athletic ability decides that it's not for them? Because eventually that is, we, one thing about WWE, um, for all the arguments of like backstage politico.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Everybody understands the sound of money.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  And no one refuses it. Like, I fucking hate this guy, but I gotta give him another match. It may not be, but I now have to give him a 10-year contract. But when they go out there, if the noise is there, even if the they's fucking hate you, you get another match. I'm, I'm proof positive of that meritocracy at work. Like, everybody fucking hated me. Why'd they hate you? I was just real different. Like, I, I was just really different. In what way?

• 53:48Speaker 02

  So, I didn't rock, I didn't ruffle any feathers when I kinda entered the business, kept quiet, did my stuff, but I also didn't connect with the audience. And, and, and I don't know, maybe you guys see this in stand-up or not, but then I got like a personality of like the, the white rap guy, like the, the white hip-hop guy. You know about that? But like, I fucking went, I fucking went all in. You know, urban gear, like, and I'm a hip-hop head, so it's like, oh man, this is my sweet spot, this is the, the avenue, this isn't all of my personality, but this is one level that I can show that I think everyone will get. So if you go to Madison Square Garden, you get it, but if we go to Wheeling, West Virginia, you'll also get it. And you may like it in some places and hate it in some places, but everyone will get it. I will not be selling apathy.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  But in doing that, I never followed dress code. I was saying disrespectful shit about my peers. Like, I kinda did it my own way. So I was, I was kinda ruffling some feathers backstage or just, I was taking big swings. Cause I was gonna fucking get fired anyway. The alternative was lose my job. So I was like, fuck it, I'm going down swinging. Yeah. And then the people behind the curtain were like, ah, the kid's disrespectful to the business, he doesn't care about the business. All the while, I just wanna keep my fucking job. You know, so the they's behind the curtain weren't really invested, but they were also humble enough to be like, there's noise out there, gotta give them another match.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  And one match at a time, times 23 years of compounding interest, we're here. What did Vince think about your hip-hop persona? Hated it and they loved it. He hated it and then loved it. And, and I think, I think I'm thinking for somebody, but I think from his perspective is, like, when I hear somebody's idea for a personality, "Man, I wanna be this sports Asian guy," or whatever, "Oh, yo, I have, I have the idea of what that is in my head." And if their projection of that idea doesn't match my projection of that idea, I'm like, "Ah, fuck, I hate it." But that doesn't mean it can't work. So I think what maybe would happen was, my perspective of the white hip-hop guy from the mean street of West Newbury,

• 55:58Speaker 02

  and Vince's perspective of John Cena, the rapper, we probably missed. Like, he had an idea, and I had an idea. And usually, he will craft it to, to his vision. I gotta give him respect for allowing me to, to kinda, to run with it, you know?

• 56:15Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's probably that fear of fi- being fired that, like, keeps you on the edge.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Dude, that was it. Of like, uh, the Nvidia guy, of like, "I don't wanna fail."

• 56:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  I got the sit-down of like, "Hey, we're gonna cut you, 'cause it's not working." Like, you, you're out there for your matches. You hear the same, "It's not working." And I, there's no argument there. I'm like, "Fucking, alright. I got to touch the sun. I got to make it. I got to play for the Yankees. I got my one at-bat. I'm Moonlight Graham." And then, they heard me rap in the back of the bus. And was like, "Man, uh, Stephanie heard me rap in the back of the bus." It was like, "Yo, you wanna do that on TV?" I'm like, "Lose my job or fucking rap? Yeah, uh, let's go. Let's, let's do this."

• 56:54Joe Rogan?

  So it was Stephanie's idea?

• 56:55Speaker 02

  And it was a fucking accident, dude. It was an accident. It's my final, my final overseas tour for the WWE. And the boys just spend time, like, that's the one time they get the whole group together, is overseas, 'cause you don't wanna be herding cats, like, in Amsterdam or something. Hey, everybody rides on the bus. You go from town to town. So like, to pass the time, the boys just do whatever. And they were freestyling in the back of the bus. And I normally just fucking kept to myself, 'cause I was raised in the environment of like, "Keep your ears open, keep your mouth shut, don't do anything, bless spoken to." So I, I did that. But I didn't, I also didn't make any connections with people who were putting their lives on the line for me. You know, you, some of the guys you, you really beat the shit out of, in the rings, are like, your best friends. So I didn't have any of those connections.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  And I heard these guys rapping and I just remember playing roller coaster tycoon on my laptop. Phone matching up, putting it away and be like, I'm going to the back of the bus. And just waited my turn and then filleted like 12 guys. Yeah. And Stephanie was like, how the fuck did you remember all that? I'm like, no, no, it's freestyle. You just make it up. And she's like, well, make up something about me. And we were boarding a plane. And I literally like utilized the plane, the people getting on the plane, what she was wearing, what she was eating. She's like, would you do this on TV? And that's where we got a chance. Wow, that's crazy. Off to the moon. Like I got a shitty chance on a small spot. And that worked. So then I got moved to like the dog shit Saturday night program that nobody watches.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  But the cool thing is no one's watching. So like I can do whatever I wanted. So I started saying more racy shit and dressing more outlandish and having more personality and like claiming ownership of the show. I called myself Mr. Saturday Night. And it's the shitty show. You don't want to be Mr. Saturday Night, but I did. And then I got another match and got another match and one by one it kind of brought me here. Wow. Just a fucking happy accident, man. That's crazy.

• 58:49Speaker 03

  All the way to.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  Even when the bells were like, hey, you want, the whole thing's a fucking accident. You want to start training? Fuck, yeah, sure. All right, great. And you want to start rapping? Yeah, fuck it. Sure. This is what happens. That's amazing. It's a happy accident.

• 59:03Speaker 03

  And for it to go all the way to last year's massive heel turn. He went heel, dude, and I.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  That was this year, by the way.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that was this.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's been, it's been a year.

• 59:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was. I was a mania. And man, one, literally, perhaps, other than maybe Hogan, right? The greatest heel turn in wrestling history. When a good, good, good, good, good, crowd pleasing guy goes bad, bad and dark. You had moments, the things you were saying, the way you were saying them. Epic, iconic, iconic heel turn. Cold, dark, working with The Rock. He was in cahoots. That's the good guy, Cody Rhodes.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  You like see the people's faces. That's the fun thing. It's like. The stuff is so simple, but it's the, if you take out the crowd in that situation and just put those three guys, it is really fucked up what we do. But when you add the audience in the back and all of their faces and what's going on, that's what makes.

• 1:00:03Joe Rogan?

  Bro, even your face, you, you, you got like a mean guy face all of a sudden. It's like you look like a different person. It's interesting.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  I was having a bad day.

• 1:00:14Joe Rogan?

  Well, this is also when you'd already done a bunch of acting.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. This is this year.

• 1:00:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is, uh, February this year. Yeah.

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  How much of the creative control do you have over the aspects of that heel turn? Like, for example, one thing that I thought was the coolest.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  My idea.

• 1:00:35Speaker 03

  I was in the front row of WrestleMania behind the Spanish announce table. So I'm directly across from the entrance. You know, the giant WrestleMania, it's a football stadium in Las Vegas. And there was no music and it was a black background normally. He's the most color with the most iconic, loud, wild music, no music, black background. And in white letters, it just said Cena. And you just walked out with, literally the statement was, "I'm not here to entertain you people," basically is what it felt like. And I loved it. I mean, this is the main event of Mania.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  You were so entertained. I may not want to entertain you. Fuck, I fucked up.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have a, I'm a, I have a degree in pro wrestling, but my masters is in heeldom. Like, it's like, the bad, I just love a bad guy. And even ever since that bad guy turn, I feel like, and I feel like most bad guy fans do, now newly connected with the back to the return of the good guy Cena.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, there it is.

• 1:01:41Speaker 03

  Oh, I mean, it's, it was literally just.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  I used to come out like a Tasmanian devil.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  And it's just reverse it all.

• 1:01:49Joe Rogan?

  And it seems like nothing, but it's iconic. Just cold as ice. Everyone else for four hours coming out with colorful music and pyro and all this stuff. And there's the guy that normally did it the best and the biggest, just really not giving a fuck.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  And WrestleMania, if you're gonna do it, like you'd give your best entrance for WrestleMania. And this was, I guess we were going for the shittiest one.

• 1:02:14Joe Rogan?

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• 1:03:37Joe Rogan?

  So like, for example, those things, those details, that's you mostly pitching to the creative team? Like, for example, like even just the white letters, the black entrance? Is that, how does that kind of come together?

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  So, I think that's, and I've been lucky enough to kind of take this perspective of not knowing everything and realizing that even with 23 years of fluency, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I don't know the technology they have and what they can do. Now granted, a black LED board, I could probably come up with that, but what I'd like to do is lean on my resources. Like, hey, let's go to production and see what production is thinking. And I don't want to tell them what to do because I want to hear their ideas first. And production was like, what if we just went basic? I'm like, how basic can you go?

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  What if we just blacked everything out? Yeah, but I know from what you guys have said, you also like to light the up. No, no, what if we just black everything out? You guys would do that? Oh, that sucks. Yeah, let's do that.

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  So it's not, it's not me with all of these things. I don't, I don't have enough depth of field to touch all the bases. But I will go to every department.

• 1:04:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  And say like, okay, entrance is a big part of what we do. What do we do for lighting? What do we do for production? Go to camera, like, how do you guys want to shoot it? And then it trickles down when you talk to the talent you're working with. How do we portray this message? Uh, and then of course, it starts at the top with creatively, I want to make you a bad guy. So we're going to do that. Okay, sure, we're going to do that. How do you want to do that? But it's, I think it's getting, we have a lot of talented people and just allowing them to do their job and, and let you know like, oh, I was kind of thinking this. And then tell them like, yeah, that's a good idea. Let's do that.

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Because I don't know what, I don't know what I miss if I'm making all the demands.

• 1:05:26Speaker 03

  To show you the contrast, his opponent that night came out to, I think it was 40 people on red, white and blue dirt bikes.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  Dirt bikes.

• 1:05:34Speaker 03

  All dressed like American people.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Nitro circus.

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  He comes up elevated from inside of the stage, wearing this super gaudy mask that he has to take off. Fireworks, fireworks, fire, sparks, smoke, all of these different things. And he just comes out blank faced.

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  I just got my bunk sock on the back, just right on. There you go.

• 1:05:54Joe Rogan?

  It's so funny hearing Tony talk about this because for people who don't know, the way Tony runs Kill Tony is basically a version of a WWE event. I mean, it really is. Like when he does the arena shows, he has everything set up like a WWE event.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Joe Rogan?

  I mean, even the thing we did with Shane, when Shane was playing, when Shane was playing Trump, when Trump and I were supposedly feuding online, Trump had said something about me online, and then Trump's talking shit, like as Shane's talking shit, and then the music plays and I show up behind him. It's pure pro wrestling.

• 1:06:30Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:30Joe Rogan?

  It's pure pro wrestling.

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  And MSG's on their feet, shocked, you know, you're surprising this crowd that thinks they're just there for a comedy show. And well, there's the panel. I guess that's what we're gonna have tonight. But the surprises, the ups, the downs, and then he brings up Joey Diaz. So it's like boom, boom, kind of like that big finish at Mania that I was talking about.

• 1:06:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Superstar bringing up a superstar, you know, music, music, smoke, fire.

• 1:06:57Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:06:57Speaker 03

  All these little things.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  The more you, the more you make it important, the more important it becomes.

• 1:07:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, as, when, what he's saying is like, when Trump was there, this was as Trump was running for president, and Trump thought that I was endorsing RFK, so he got mad at me. So I said, I am here to endorse someone, and I brought out Joey Diaz. I'm in.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Which is great, because you're gonna get a reveal, but you get a different reveal, and it's like.

• 1:07:18Joe Rogan?

  And everybody went nuts, but it's like the audience, they're into it like they're into pro wrestling. They want all the heel turns, they want all the chaos, they want all the pageantry and the fire and the explosions and all the shit.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Man, you get, you get any live audience, they're into all that. Like, watch a college football game, watch, watch a soccer game overseas, or football, as they would say. Like, the fans, it's, it's like a group think of energy.

• 1:07:45Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  That's fucking nuts.

• 1:07:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  Like, audiences want it. It doesn't matter where you're at. Like, man, when comics just go out and light up a stage, and they have that fucking stage presence, and they just slay a set, the fucking audience is rolling in the aisles, like, they, you, you let them, you let them in. And they, they can help make a joke that might not hit the night before, slay. Like, it's, it's all about the moment, it's all about being there and reading the people. And the fun thing about WWE is you can, you can go out there with an idea, and in kind, I can only imagine this as kind of like stand-up, where if you got your set and you tell the first joke to crickets, you may try another joke, and if that's crickets, you gotta fucking pivot.

• 1:08:26Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  So we go out, we go out and do something, and, oh, man, they're into it. Great, all right, we have them, we just gotta maintain their attention until we get to act three, essentially. But if you hear fucking crickets, you're like, alright, we're switching it up. Fuck it, we'll pivot right now. And you, that's the beauty, that's, that's one of the things that I love the most is the, it's not just me and the other person out there, like, the audience is the act. Every, like, that moment only means something. If you put a blue screen behind the people, it is super fucked up. Like, what the fuck are they doing and why does that mean anything?

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  But when you let the level of the audience and everybody's on their feet, they go, no! Like, it's fucking everything, it's everything.

• 1:09:08Speaker 03

  That's why Tony's so interested in the coordination of it all, and the setting and the sabotage, and all the chaos that's involved in all of it.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  But these are, these are human emotions that are universal.

• 1:09:18Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  Everyone understands betrayal, jealousy, anger, disappointment, failure, excitement, like, these are universal things that you, if we don't speak the same language, you still have felt these things.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  And you could watch that, no one spoke in that clip. But you could watch that in anywhere in the world and be like, that kid just got fucked over.

• 1:09:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Oh, what's, what's gonna happen next? Like, that's the beautiful appeal of it, you know, it's, it's, we don't hit too far above our weight class, like, we, we try to send large-scale, universal messages based on true, real, human emotion that we all know.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, and up to that day, that moment, like, even that thing that we were just telling you about, me bringing, uh, him coming out, that being a reveal, him bringing up Diaz, was coordinated, literally, I think, 15 minutes before-

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Which is great.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  Go time. Like, literally, me with a, with a big piece of paper going, hey, Joe, what if we did this? He confirms it, so I go to hair and makeup where they're finishing up Shane as Trump, which in itself is just hysterical. I pitch it to him, he loves it. I go to Diaz, I say, Rogan's gonna bring you up, and, and the thing happens quick. Whereas with all, you know, every form of entertainment that we're used to, other than wrestling and, like, kinda-

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  You know, Kill Tony in this instance, everything's so pre-planned.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Sure is.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  That if we over-preplanned it, we wouldn't have had the topical RFK endorsement because it was like news that day.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, sure.

• 1:10:52Speaker 03

  And so again, that inspiration, you know, totally comes from there. Because what else is doing that at MSG 10 minutes before the show, reorganizing things.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  Reorganizing the show.

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  So now we have to go to production and go have Rogan's LED ready and then Diaz in that order, you know? It literally comes from that.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  And when it goes right, there's not a better feeling in the world.

• 1:11:16Speaker 03

  Exactly. I just get to sit back and watch.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Joe Rogan?

  But it's so funny that that connection with pro wrestling is really why you've made Kill Tony the way it is.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:27Joe Rogan?

  Like without your love of pro wrestling, it would be such a different show. Like if it was just run like a traditional stand-up show.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:35Joe Rogan?

  It's, there's so much else going on that makes it the biggest show.

• 1:11:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, it's long-term storytelling. We had a guy on on Monday that had been doing it 14 years. And man, he just, his timing was off. He struggled even after the minute. I go, you've been doing it 14 years? He goes, yeah, man. I go, what do you, how do you make money? He goes, I do this. I go, you do this for a living? He goes, yeah. I go, you must have better material. I'm going to give you another shot. Do another minute. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. And I introduce him again and he bombs again. And literally, um, I was talking with it, about it with Stephanie after the show because she just happened to be at Kill Tony on Monday. And she goes, guy, a guy like that, you know, what hap, you know, what happens next?

• 1:12:24Speaker 03

  I go, hopefully, hopefully, the guy gets pulled out of the bucket in a month or two, has a great set. Puts it together, realizes, oh, his timing was off. He wasn't taking a breath. He wasn't connecting with the crowd. He was just memorizing his stuff and the story begins to be told about this guy. And sometimes it happens in reverse. Sometimes somebody starts off, you know, fire hot.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  Rocket strapped to the back.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Yep. And then, oof, and that's kind of the sadder thing, right? Is starting hot and then never being able to touch that again. Have a moment like your first time.

• 1:12:59Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's like we were talking about people with talent. We all know someone who killed during open mic days that we were like, wow, this guy's going to be huge. They have like undeniable talent. And they just can't manage it. They can't figure it out. They self sabotage. They get addicted to drugs or alcohol, whatever it is.

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  There are so many things.

• 1:13:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  It's not just the ability to go out and do the task well. There's so many variables that will fuck you up.

• 1:13:24Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  Dude, you're right. So many, so many gifted people have just, just have that roadblock in front of them.

• 1:13:33Joe Rogan?

  Which is why I think conversations with successful people are so important. Because you get to hear those stories. You get to hear, like with Jensen the other day, he was talking about how Nvidia was basically bankrupt. They were, they were on their way out and someone gave him a chance, like some, some one guy that was an investor gave him a chance. And then they wound up becoming successful. And then there was this, these moments. And people need to know that you're gonna have those hurdles. You're gonna have those roadblocks. You're gonna have to figure out how to adjust. It's not easy. None of, no one who. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp.

• 1:14:13Joe Rogan?

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• 1:14:57Joe Rogan?

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• 1:15:18Joe Rogan?

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• 1:15:59Joe Rogan?

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• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  Has been successful at anything. We'll tell you, the whole ride was easy. Yeah, but a lot of the times, man, sometimes we'll be in it. So I've been through like three generations of knowledge and learning, 23 years in the business, operating at a high level. I have seen thousands. And like, it is the, man, if you're a stud in Pee Wee Football League, then you go to this junior high school, and then you're the number one player in college, and then you're the number one player in high school, number one player in college, eke out a spot in the NFL, and then a year later, you're gone. Because the funnel just gets so thin.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  Like WWE has like 200 personnel in their NXT development program right now. Maybe 10 will make it. Maybe, and of those 10, like really, honestly, maybe one will make it. And what the hope is, is over a six-year period.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  Of those classes of 200 that get matriculated probably every four months. So we're talking 6,000 people. I'm hoping one makes it.

• 1:17:19Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  In five or six years, I need one. Because my top guy right now, my Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes and the Charlotte Flairs and Becky Lynch's of the world, like, they'll last half a decade to draw. Maybe if we're lucky, maybe we'll get it more. They can, you know, maybe parlay it into a decade or two. But that's an anomaly. You gotta play the legit math of like, after five years, I better have somebody in the on-deck circle.

• 1:17:45Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  So out of like, 5, 6,000, I just need one. But it's still, everybody's biting their fingernails of like, we don't have the person yet. It's so many folks just don't make it. Just don't make it.

• 1:17:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that's the parallel of stand-up.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, man.

• 1:18:02Joe Rogan?

  So, you know, there's so many people that, we were talking last night in the green room.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  Thousands. And when I see them like, in the ring, do stuff, I'm like, I could never do that. But they just won't, they just don't make it.

• 1:18:14Joe Rogan?

  It's just, there's so many things that fuck people up. So much self-sabotage, so much inability to stay the course.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Being our own worst enemy.

• 1:18:23Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know.

• 1:18:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  I don't know. Yeah. Happy accidents, though. Fuck it.

• 1:18:29Joe Rogan?

  Well, yeah, happy accidents, but not just that. It's you being able to stay on course. And you being able to recognize that, you know, okay, this didn't work, what do I do? You want me to rap? Okay, I'll fucking rap. Like, a lot of people would have been like, I'm not fucking rapping.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  That's beneath me. I'm here to be a wrestler. I'm not a gimmick.

• 1:18:50Joe Rogan?

  I'm not gonna be a buffoon.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll be a buffoon.

• 1:18:52Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  Because it beats working a real job.

• 1:18:55Joe Rogan?

  It's not only that, it's part of the entertainment of it all, even the cringe aspect of it. Where people are like, what is going on here? Like, it's great. He loves that shit.

• 1:19:05Speaker 02

  Oh, it's the best.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  The best. You know who my guy is right now? Dominic Mysterio. Love Dom. Oh my god. So he's... Were you? No, you're here. I was gonna... You weren't at Petco, were you? No. Ah, gosh, we had fun over there. I bet. I was... I caught a lot of it, yeah. Man, that kid's good, too. Like, good, good human being. I happened to be in, um, Salt Lake City doing a gig. I was doing stand-up in one arena, and the WWE happened to be in the other arena in Salt Lake City just a few weeks ago. And I'm like, "Ah, darn." But I look it up, and it's a 5:00 PM taping of WWE. So I hit up my friends at WWE. I go, "I'm coming in." "I'm bringing my openers, right?"

• 1:19:49Speaker 03

  Anyway, Dominic Mysterio's in a triple threat match. And his whole thing is, he's wrestling royalty. He's Rey Mysterio's son, but he claims that he might be Eddie Guerrero's son, because he... Because his father's, you know, one of the ultimate good guys of all time. So basically, he takes on, uh, the, the, the traits of Eddie Guerrero, whose whole thing was cheating, and lying, and stealing, breaking the rules in original ways all the time. And he's doing a triple threat match, which means there's three guys at once, right? But if the... If someone beats anybody, you could lose your belt. And his Intercontinental Champion, I think it's Intercontinental, right? Is on the line.

• 1:20:32Speaker 03

  And he gets thrown outside the ring. And I'm having fun, right? I go, "Dominic, cheat. Do something, right?" And he's kind of on the other side of the thing, and he lifts up his head and looks at me and goes like that. He gives a big wink, and then he goes back down again. And I'm cracking up. I go, "Did you see that?" I'm next to Paulie Shore. I go, "Did you just see him wink?" He goes, "Yeah, man. What's he gonna do, bro?" But these two guys in the ring are wrestling, and one of them has the other one in a submission hold, a camel clutch. I can't remember who it was, but anyway. And I'm... And I... You... I literally, even me, watching since I was a kid, and even though he just winked at me, it was just enough time. I forgot that Dominic was over there, because this action in the ring is really happening.

• 1:21:16Speaker 03

  Something's about to happen, and you hear the bell ring. And I look over, and there's Dominic with the hammer in his hand, ringing the bell. And the guy lets go of the submission, and the referee goes, "What the hell?" And something I hadn't seen in... Thirty-five years of watching this thing. He was, he's innovative enough to find a brand-new way to cheat in this.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  Less twice.

• 1:21:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. A brand-new way to cheat and the crowd, everybody's cracking up.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:21:47Speaker 03

  It's a whole new, right when you think you've seen it all. This guy, who you would love, he's literally like built like me. He flexes like Nate Diaz without flexing and he's just braggadocious. Oh, yeah, he thinks he, he thinks he won, but the ref's like, no. And, hold on, I gotta cut to Dominic. He just loves it.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  Yep, there's our guy.

• 1:22:19Speaker 03

  Dirty Dom.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  And the crowd just loves him. That's all of us right there. That's Matty Edgar, Joe DeRosa, Paulie Shore, me. It was DeRosa's first real wrestling event. He had the time of his life, childlike wonder.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  I love getting people in there live for the first time.

• 1:22:39Joe Rogan?

  There's something funny about a pro wrestler that's not built too.

• 1:22:42Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, yeah, and he's the champ. And all, all these other guys, that guy pent.

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  Man, he just whipped my ass, Dirty Dom, he just whipped my ass. For real, I just lost the Intercontinental Championship to that son of a bitch.

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  Look at him, covered in gold.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  Probably, what, five nine hundred?

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  No, he's a tall drink of water. He's taller than me, but he's 170 pounds soaking wet.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:23:04Joe Rogan?

  He's such a uniquely American form of art.

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Joe Rogan?

  It really is.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  It's weird because in pockets of the world, like it's, Japan has their own style of doing it. Latin America has their own style of doing it. The UK has their own style of doing it. But this.

• 1:23:19Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  Like, the Japanese is very strong style with respect to martial art. The English style is very like catch as catch can, a real like technical expose. The Latin American style, the Mexican style is high-flying.

• 1:23:33Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  The, the American offering of like steak, sizzle, apple pie, ice cream, 4th of July, everything, like huge.

• 1:23:42Speaker 03

  And that's all Vince, right?

• 1:23:45Joe Rogan?

  A lot of it.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  So is it all ever one person?

• 1:23:48Joe Rogan?

  Right, it's not.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  A lot of it is, a lot of it is. But like promotions like World Class Championship Wrestling were some of the first to use music. Vince was the first to be like, rock and roll, get over here and get on cable and let's let's blow this thing out. I want to do it, it's it's not just something we have in a local VFW. With cigar smoke and guys taking side action on carnival tricks. No, this is a fucking thing and we are gonna make this a fucking thing.

• 1:24:15Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:24:16Joe Rogan?

  It's also a fucking thing where it's a lot of it is not televised. Cause you're just traveling around the country doing these shows.

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  Yes, so that that the business model has kind of changed. Where media content is king now. So from what I understand from TKO, and I know their executives will correct me, but from my perspective. We have scaled back on the live event only offerings, which helps, you know, lick the wounds. It's weird, it like you don't bump enough or you don't bump as much, but you kind of need to get in there and bump to get your callus and to get your wind and timing. So it's it's kind of you get your signals crossed, but anyhow. The content that is provided is always available for media or or 99% where it used to be the opposite. We used to do like four live shows, one TV taping.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  So you'd have four live shows under your match, you know, you do you do like Lafayette, Little Rock, Pensacola, and then TV in Orlando. You know, and that would be the end of the run and then you'd do it again of like Bangor, Portsmouth, Providence, TV in Boston. You know, like, and then you'd go for another week and go somewhere else, but it's it's different now. It's like every piece is televised for the media, which is great because we get a lot out to our fans across the world. But like I learned, I learned how to fail in those non televised events.

• 1:25:40Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:25:41Speaker 02

  I could take big swings because it's like, man, if I'm on the in the middle of a card in in Valparaiso. And I kind of fuck up in a gymnasium with 3,500 people. They might, they might tell me to fuck off, but there's also the last match that's gonna send them home happy. So let's try this new weird thing. And that's where like me being invisible starts. You know, it's just like, ah, I'll fucking try it, who cares? Cause it's it's an environment where you don't want to fail and now it's. There's way more advantage on getting our content out there, but production is super slick. It's like really precise. Everyone's really good and I don't know how many people go out there and just like, like Dom. Like that was an example of swinging big.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  I'm gonna fake ring the bell. Will people even get that? Who cares? Let's try it. Like he's, he's the only one of those guys who will, or very few of those guys will stand on an idea like that. Where the other guys are like, no, I want to have a good choreographed performance. Cause I want my stuff to look good, cause it's on television and going around the world. You know, I loved the non televised events. But there's just, there's not, there's not, it's not a good business model.

• 1:26:50Joe Rogan?

  So how does a young person coming up now learn how to fail?

• 1:26:55Speaker 02

  That is, I think a conundrum that we're facing. Because you're failing in front of the world.

• 1:27:01Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  You know, um, it's, it's weird. You can have, you can, it's like you work out your set, but you can't do it on small clubs before you go to arena. It's like you would, you would work out your set at home. And then you just play the Intuit Dome. Or you play Barclay Center. Like you don't have a small room to be like, alright, it landed. Oh man, I gotta rework that one. You don't ever have that. You just have this, you put it together in your head, you think it's okay, and then you're out there. So I, I don't know. Um, I'm not saying it can't work. I think it can because analytics show that it, it does work and we, we have a lot of people watching now. But from my perspective, I really enjoyed

• 1:27:43Speaker 02

  the carefree nature of just going out and being ready for anything. And, and it being okay if I, I fucked up and I failed. If I told some bad jokes, I could come back and be like, that didn't work, that didn't work. And then you have a partner to be like, oh, and this didn't work, but this slayed, why don't you do this again? Like. Literally, that's where this came from. Just fucking around at live events. And, oh my god, there's noise. I'll do it tomorrow night. We're in a different town. Let's see if they get.

• 1:28:09Joe Rogan?

  How did you come up with that?

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  It was a dare. My brother, a happy fucking accident. My brother dared me to do it. Like, when we, um, when I was in the middle of the, the rapping wormhole, I made, I'm a platinum rapper. I made my own album. So like, in, in making, yeah, yes.

• 1:28:27Joe Rogan?

  That's amazing.

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  Drink it in, drink it in. In, uh, in making the album, we would bring home all the tracks. And like, my little brother was our test audience. And he would do this dance where he would like shake his head and keep his hand in front of him. Like, that is, man, look at you. He's like, you won't do that on TV. And again, I was on the programs that no one was watching. So it's like, no one's watching anyway. Yeah, fuck you, I will do it on TV. And I did it on some meaningless Saturday show and there was a little bit of noise. So I took it with me on the road for the next week and did it on the live events that weren't televised. There's a little bit of noise. Okay, like, this is my thing now. This is my thing. And I just, you can't see me. And like, that's, now it's a thing. Yeah.

• 1:29:12Joe Rogan?

  Amazing.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's, I did it on a dare.

• 1:29:16Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  But like, I also had, I was in a place to be able to tell my brother, okay, I can waste two seconds on an inside joke between you and I. That's the dare. It's not gonna ruin the match, but if you're watching, if you're the only one person watching Velocity that night, you'll be like, inside joke, got it. All right, it's like shouting out your gaming group. Like, seven people get the joke, but this is one of those things where it kind of fit and it stuck.

• 1:29:42Joe Rogan?

  Wow. It's just so many of those things in your life. So many of those, like, fortuitous moments.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  Well, I, you know, um, admittedly, I, I have, I have an optimism bias. I, I will admit that. But life will, will deal opportunity. It's, it's.

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  It's a matter of understanding that it's happening. You know, don't get in your own way.

• 1:30:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  Like, say, yeah, come here, sit with you guys. This is a new experience for me. Like, yeah, let's do it. Okay, great. Man, first wrestler to ever retire. Yes, that's a good idea. We're just gonna do it. Yeah, but you'll never be able to come back. Yes, but the, let's just do this thing. Like, life is throwing me an opportunity to create a year's worth of programming narrative that I think will be interesting. The alternative is to do what everybody else has done and maybe hang on too long. People are like, man, you should have left a few years ago. Now, let's, let's, let's do this. Rap, let's do this. Do you want to train? It involves you working at this shitty job where you're probably gonna, I tried to be a cop and failed, I was gonna go down and join the Marines. That's lifelong employment. I'm, I'm really good with structure. I dig uniform.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  Like, I, give me what to do and like a code of conduct to live by. I have a feeling I would have fit in there. Great. I love being in shape. They, they feed you over there. Like, I, I think I would have done okay, but life put an opportunity in front of me and I was stupid enough to say yes. Going out naked in the Oscars. I was just on Jimmy Kimmel last night. He's like, man, you want to do this bit? I'm like, dude, I am super tired. I'm on, I'm on a different coast. He's like, let me send you the bit. And I read it, I'm like, yo, fuck. All right, I'm gonna do it.

• 1:31:22Speaker 05

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• 1:31:53Joe Rogan?

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• 1:32:38Joe Rogan?

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• 1:32:54Speaker 02

  Shuffled out there with an index card over my dick.

• 1:32:56Joe Rogan?

  Oh, that, that thing, yeah.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like, man, in a room full of, not even peers or contemporaries, like, the pantheon of the professional goal that you try to reach. I don't know any of these fucking people. I don't belong in that room.

• 1:33:11Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  And he's like, "Yeah, man, just kind of walk out there naked. It'll be a fun bit." And he's right, it would be a funny bit. But I could've got in my own way of like, "Now I gotta fly, I'm exhausted. I'm gonna make a fool out of myself. I don't know any of these people, it's my first impression." I can, I can sit on the couch, like, that's the easy part. The tough part is like, life has dealt you this opportunity. Fucking say yes. 15 minutes before the show, when you get a good idea, the easy thing to do is be like, "Do the show." The hard thing to do is be like, "Yo, let's, let's fucking swing, let's go for it."

• 1:33:43Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:43Speaker 02

  So it's, it's not, like, I, I think those moments happen to a lot of us. And it doesn't have to be a lottery ticket, granted. Holy hell, I've been given a lot of lottery tickets. But it could be something as simple as like, "Yo, you're in a crummy mood. Find a way to be kind." Like, life just gave you an opportunity. The person getting your coffee is like, yo, have a nice day. You could stay crummy, or you could be like, fuck, thank you very much. Appreciate that. Appreciate your time. Like, that's an opportunity. You know, life is just a matter of like, us reacting to what life throws at. Pivotal decisions. And it doesn't need to be a world-changing decision. I think now, I don't wanna say nowadays, I think we always think that like, the decision needs to change the world.

• 1:34:26Speaker 02

  No, it's, you just need to fucking commit and do something. As a twelve-year-old, I wanna start working out. And I liked it, and I just fucking keep working out. And now, now I can't live without it. It's part of my life, it's a fabric of my life. But in working out, I've learned structure and discipline, accountability, essentially budget. If you take in too much and you don't spend enough, you're gonna have some excess. Like, these lessons that opportunity can teach you, if you allow it. Me fucking up, the thing I spoke about at the beginning, like, the easiest thing to do is your fault. But if I take it as an opportunity of like, alright, you missed. What did we learn? Where's the gain? Yeah. You can move forward.

• 1:35:10Speaker 02

  And I can move forward and wholeheartedly apologize to those I've hurt along the way. And they don't need to forgive me, that's on their terms, I can't control that. But man, the sleep is a little more sound at night, knowing like, in learning this lesson or having this opportunity, fuck dude, I kinda trampled on your shit, and I'm so sorry. Like, I had such a shitty relationship with my dad. And just recently, we've mended fences, and he's eighty, so I'm glad I've done this, cuz I mean, we don't last forever, he's going, we're all going in the dirt soon, you know? But I just wanted him to be something else. I always wanted that motherfucker to change. I wanted him to be something else. And finally, I got out of my own way. The hard thing is meeting that guy where he's at. The hard thing is allowing him to be who he is.

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  Take the weight off my backpack and say like, yo, I might have needed you to be this in my life. But because you weren't, man, because of your absence in being the dad that I had in my mind, I got all these fucking cool male mentors. Who kept, who gave me a key to the gym at fifteen and said, you better fucking be here in the morning. And like, dude, I still can feel the key in my hand from Dave Nock. The dean of students at Coaching Academy who bet on me. He was like, man, if you get your grades from Cs to As and you play two varsity sports, this place costs in ninety-four, this place costs thirty-five grand a year. We will give you aid and you will have a place to learn. And that allowed me to become an adult.

• 1:36:38Speaker 02

  It allowed me to, the opportunity of being in a diverse group of students. Who, man, there's like royalty that goes to that school. And then there's fucking poor kids. My roommate was a basketball player from Compton. And then we got kids with generational wealth who their name and buildings after. But when it's just like four hundred and fifty kids in a social experiment, money goes away and you just, you, you just kick it. So I learned to be friends with everybody. But I wouldn't have learned that in West Newbury where it's ninety-nine point nine percent white, twelve hundred people in the small town, no stoplights. You either leave or you never leave, like just little, little things like that. You know what I'm saying? Like little, like, man, I should do this. And deciding to meet my dad where he's at. And be like, dude, whatever I thought you were, you're not.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  You're just you and I love you for you. And man, when we sit, there's some shit that he'll say that's all fucked up. You know, he said some shit yesterday that like, I don't think John's last opponent should be there. And people listen to him because he's a wrestling fan. He's like in the, kind of like the weird subculture zeitgeist. And I want to call my dad and be like, what the fuck are you doing? But then like, no, he's doing what he does. This is him. This is the dad I, this is the John Cena I love. This is, this is the guy I can sit down with and, and, and part of that is being able to process all that. But the opportunity I get from that. I've learned about my father's story. I've learned about what he, what he wants to do with his life, why he does what he does. Maybe what he wanted to do, dreams he didn't have, so I can gain wisdom from there.

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  But it's just, that's the hard part is like getting out of your own fucking way to do the thing you really want to do. The easy thing to do is to hold a grudge against my dad. What I really wanted to do was tell my dad I love him and sit down with him and be like, yo, let's fucking break bread.

• 1:38:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  Talk about whatever you want. And now we do that and it's great.

• 1:38:25Joe Rogan?

  That's awesome.

• 1:38:26Speaker 02

  That's a small example of the easy thing to do is sit on the couch and say, fuck it. Somebody else's fault.

• 1:38:33Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  The tough thing to do is like, life is handing me a moment right now. And dude, I don't bat a thousand. I mean, it's more like Major League Baseball. I'm hoping 300 gets me in the Hall of Fame. Like, if I can capitalize on 30% of the moments that life gives me and squander the other 70%, I believe I will go into the ground being like, man, I earned life.

• 1:38:53Joe Rogan?

  If you can capitalize on 30% of the moments, you are in the 1% of human beings that have ever lived.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  I earned life.

• 1:39:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:01Speaker 02

  So I'm, I'm just trying to get that, make it to Cooperstown.

• 1:39:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that's, that's the reality. And also the reality is if someone doesn't give you what you need, it, it gives you a desire to get what you need. Sometimes it's a gift to not have like doting parents.

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm like, oh my goodness. Like I said, I would never have gotten those, the beautiful guidance I got in life. I always had father figures. Because I was searching for it and they, they found me. And I was also savvy enough to be like, this guy needs to stick in my life for a little bit. It sucks and he fucking pushes me, but I gotta keep this guy around. Like just weird stuff like that. I hear a lot of wrestlers, a lot of times. What do you want to do here? I want to be champion. Okay. The math of that's really slim. I never wanted to be a fucking champion. I just wanted to wrestle. And if you're good, it'll take you places where one day you can hold one of those. But if you start with a goal of, I want to hold one of those, man, am I pigeonholing my goal.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  What the fuck do you really wanna do? I just wanted to wrestle. And if I got fired by WWE, I would've tried to go to Japan. I would've tried to go to Mexico. I would've tried to go to the UK. Fuck it, cuz I just wanted to do it. But that also meant I would put my best foot forward and I wasn't shackled to, I need to be champion or I'm not validated. I'm not successful.

• 1:40:20Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:40:21Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:40:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  Just give me a chance to go out there and get the noise and whatever else falls into place, fuck it, cool. Because what I wanna do is just go out there and be in the arena.

• 1:40:31Joe Rogan?

  It's funny cuz they talk about the noise the way we talk about the laughs.

• 1:40:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:34Joe Rogan?

  It's the same thing.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  It's the same thing, man.

• 1:40:37Joe Rogan?

  It's the same thing.

• 1:40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, and I don't need to be the most decorated person, but it's weird because in not even trying, I have a resume that people will now measure up against like, oh, that's, you gotta win X amount to, to pass the hurdle. So it's weird, like I didn't, I didn't even try to do any of that. All I tried to do is like, you'll just get me out there. And, and when you look at what I've done and, and you've, you've followed a bit like, it was weird, I was in the main event of WrestleMania this year. And to talk to people, they were like, oh, man, that's crazy. The last main event of WrestleMania I was in was 2012. So you'd think that like, oh, John Cena, this guy's, everything handed to him, he's always at the top.

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  That was my first main event WrestleMania appearance as an attraction in like 13 years. And in that span, I worked new wrestlers. I worked for lower level titles. I sat ringside and crushed three beers and then got fucking squashed by The Undertaker as a fan.

• 1:41:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  Like, I, I did all sorts of shit, you know? But because it was never about like, I'm not a success unless I'm in the main event of WrestleMania. No, that's just a position with a ton of stress. Just fucking get me on the course, just get me in the arena. Have me in section one shaking hands with people from Australia and I'll make it the best fucking time they ever had. It doesn't matter. Like, just get me out there. What I don't want to do is sit on the bench.

• 1:42:02Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:42:03Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:42:04Joe Rogan?

  So, how did you go from that into acting? Like, what was your first?

• 1:42:09Speaker 02

  So, originally, it was a business choice. Vince opened WWE Studios. And with the idea of if we make these guys movie stars, more people come to the arena.

• 1:42:19Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  Now, as a young twenty-something on the road, people chant your name every night. I'm like, more people in the arena? That sounds fucking great. And his first movie was supposed to be with Steve Austin and the, it, it fell through. They were about to shoot in two weeks, so movie pre-production is way longer than that. But he was like, you're going to Australia to film this movie, The Marine. And it, it was tough. It was tough. I went from arrive in a town at noon. Work out, get a good meal in, crush the show, have some beers on the ride to the next town. Fall asleep, do it all again. And it's like this whirlwind of electricity to, okay, you're in hair and makeup at six o'clock. We're doing an explosion today.

• 1:43:00Speaker 02

  So, the lights are gonna be weird and we probably will get to you around 5:30 PM. You just said it's six in the morning. Yeah.

• 1:43:10Speaker 02

  So, what the fuck you want me to do from here until 5:30? Uh, you, just hang out? And I couldn't, like, as a young twenty-something, I wanted to be in the electricity. I couldn't handle the, the nature of the business.

• 1:43:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:23Speaker 02

  And therefore, my passion wasn't in it. I wasn't fully invested in it. I am, I am fucking here with you guys right now. We are talking about this. My, my mind isn't elsewhere on other shit. I, I want this to be, I want to give you all I got, so I'm here with you. I was never there in those movies. I was always back in, fuck, maybe if I had the feud with this guy, or if I could have done this. I was never there. And you could see it in the performance. So, I kinda got run out of the movie business. I did so many shitty movies in like 2009, 10. My, my best friend, agent Dan Baim at the time, I was like, man,

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  we're never doing movies again, right? And, you know, as an agent, you're supposed to be the guy to pick you up. He looks at me dead. He goes, nope. We will find another way, though. He was honest. We are never do, we are run out of town, but we'll find another way. So, we did. We did, hosted some live shows, uh, um, hosted some game shows, did little appearances here and there. And then, uh, Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer gave me a chance on, um,

• 1:44:20Speaker 02

  Uh, gosh, Trainwreck. And it was a very small part, but again, like, just, just get out in the arena and do your best. And, and look, I was in a fucking room with comics, like funny people. I don't belong there. But they, they created an environment where I wasn't judged. They only showed the good jokes. They didn't, they didn't show the fucking twenty takes, or I tried to tell jokes that sucked. The only ones that made the final cut were the ones that made people laugh. So they, they provided an opportunity for failure. And at that point, I've been playing the same characters, it's two thousand and fourteen, fifteen. I've been playing the same character on TV for fifteen fucking years. And now I'm like, yo, I get to do something different? I can do this for twelve hours, you want me to sit? I'll go fucking read a book, I don't care, I'm in.

• 1:45:05Speaker 02

  So I accepted the patient process of movies. And then after that, I, I, I got a little bit of noise in Trainwreck. And then Judd sent word to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who were filming up the road in Long Island, like, if you got a spot, you should hire the kid. And they made me a drug dealer in their thing, and then like, things started to roll downhill, but it was very, very small parts at a time. And here I am, that was two thousand and fifteen, here I am a decade later, and I'm still trying to advance to fluency. By no means am I like, I'm the, the seventeen time champ of the, the acting community. Those are the motherfuckers I was looking at when I was naked, you know?

• 1:45:43Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:45:44Speaker 02

  I'm aspiring to try to be that. But it's, basically the pivot happened when I was like, yo, if you just invest in this,

• 1:45:54Speaker 02

  the hustle you, and patience you put into wrestling,

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  at least you know you gave it your all. You know, be coachable, be professional, be reliable, be interested. And, and see where the chips fly, and, and fucking say yes.

• 1:46:09Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's also you had the...

• 1:46:12Joe Rogan?

  The objectivity, like the introspective objectivity to look at your past performances and say, "I wasn't really in there."

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  I wasn't, and I got run out of town.

• 1:46:21Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:22Speaker 02

  I lost the job. So like, here's that, here's that mulligan. "What, fuck, I'm, I'll, I'll never work in this town again." "I will? Alright, let's go, let's try. What else could go wrong? They've already fired me."

• 1:46:33Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:46:34Speaker 02

  You know, so again, an environment and no one does it alone. The, the people I was around, Tina and Amy are the same way, like only show the funny shit, but try whatever you want, like, fail, it's okay. And just because you're around people who do comedy for a living, all we need is three seconds and we'll be patient enough to give you what you need to give us that three seconds.

• 1:46:55Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:46:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's a, it's just such a fun story, you know, and there's so, there's only a few guys that have managed to make that leap from WWE. Obviously, The Rock is the big one.

• 1:47:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:47:08Joe Rogan?

  You know, I mean, he's the biggest one.

• 1:47:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:47:10Joe Rogan?

  To make that leap and now become a giant movie star.

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's a, I think it's a leap a lot of people can make. Uh, it's not from, from lack of talent. We talk about like obstacles and like we're in our own way. WWE is all consuming. And you gotta remember, like, I, I was their biggest act. So at 220 shows a year, for me to be like, "Hey, I need six months off to film this action movie." That really fucks with the bottom line. Like,

• 1:47:37Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:38Speaker 02

  So, so the answer's no.

• 1:47:40Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  You know, and, and, and now with less live events, it's still, you, you wanna be on television. It's like, okay, I need to somehow leverage my relevance with this to what it's gonna do to film that. In WWE, if you're not, I'm, I'm gonna retire on the 13th. They will be moved on by the Royal Rumble. And that's, that is real facts. I will be forgotten. That is not a plea to sympathy of like, "Always remember me." By the Royal Rumble and the Road to WrestleMania, nobody gives a fuck. Cause they're focusing on what the show is. That's like three weeks after I retire. Three weeks after I retire, nobody's gonna give a fuck. And that's not, I'm not saying like what I did was meaningless. I've lived the moments, they're great.

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  People move on. So when, if I'm a talent who's on TV and finally got one of those spots and edged my way in, do I, is this the right time to leverage taking myself off a TV? To do four months on something that isn't gonna come out for another 18 months? And then I gotta go back to TV hoping people still care? That my, my ring work is still polished? That I still have my finger on the pulse? Like it's, it is, we can get in our own way sometimes. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:48:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:54Speaker 02

  So I, I, I was just at the point in 15, 16, 17, where I was like, man, my body's kinda banged up, I'm a little older. I would like to take some time off. And how I talked about like every five years you needed somebody in the on deck circle. So I'm, I'm running at the front for like 15. They needed someone in the on deck circle. And then they finally got some folks. So they're like, yo, we got, we got folks, yeah, go do the thing. It's fine, go do it. So my, my passion for it was ignited at the perfect time. When, when the office side of it was like, that won't affect our bottom line too much. Go give this thing a try. It, it, again, just happy accident, man. And I'm grateful for it.

• 1:49:38Joe Rogan?

  So now you're in the situation, you're gonna retire?

• 1:49:41Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:49:42Joe Rogan?

  And then are you just gonna go all in on acting now?

• 1:49:45Speaker 02

  So that's, again, beyond my control. If I could, if I could-

• 1:49:50Joe Rogan?

  Is that the goal though? Is that what you would like?

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  Uh, the, the goal is to live useful. That's it. The goal is to live useful and, and not lack like a depth of purpose in my life. You know? I can't control if the phone rings and they say, we want the kid in the picture. That's way beyond me. What I can do is when someone bets on me, do my fucking damnedest for every dollar, I wanna give him 10 back. I wanna show them that you, I wanna show you your time was well spent today. I wanna give you my heart and soul. And when I leave here, you may be like, ah, not my cup of tea, but the fucking kids are all right. You know, like, that's, that's all I'm trying to do. So if I can do that, maybe I get another, maybe I get another match. Maybe I get another phone call. But I also realize my mortality in, in the retirement, like, it's over.

• 1:50:37Speaker 02

  But also, there'll come a day where y'all out there are like, ah, the kid's not, not cool anymore. I'm done. I'm on to the next shiny thing. I'm grateful for what I got, and I know I don't control how many times the phone rings. I just wanna, I never wanna phone it in.

• 1:50:51Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  And, and when my time is up, it's over with, man. I like, I'll, I'll do the rest of whatever life is.

• 1:50:57Joe Rogan?

  Do you think about that, like, what the rest of life is? Do you have other interests?

• 1:51:01Speaker 02

  Sure do, sure do. Um, love messing around with music. I, I never read as a kid, so I'm reading more than I ever have. Um, love cars, love, I'd love to just drive, that like, just being in a car and driving, not track stuff, just like going on long drives, love that. I see a bunch of sticks, I love an occasional stick with some conversation. Uh, I love, boy, did I miss out on loving connections in my life. So I'm like, I have them now, and they're fucking so cool. So if, if a day is just spent with friends, or a week, or like, man, with WWE, I've been around the world like 12 times, I haven't seen shit. I've seen the inside of arenas, a hotel bar, and a fucking airport.

• 1:51:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  I wanna know what Tokyo is all about. I've been there like 20 times, I haven't seen shit. You know, like, I'm, and, and I don't know if I'll ever get tired of that. I, like, um, I always have a curious nature on to, to what's next. I don't know what that'll be, but I, I never wanna wake up and be like, man, life's taking forever. You know what I'm saying? I think there's always something to do with the day. So I don't, I don't know. Would I love to continue to tell stories and get paid for it? Fuck, that's a great gig. But it's also beyond my control. So instead of being like, I'm going all in on acting and I want to do this and one day I want to win an Oscar. And when I'm saying that approach is bad, I'm just saying my approach is like, man, when they do call, be grateful.

• 1:52:30Speaker 02

  And don't be grateful in the easy times. Be grateful when they ask you to work a 69-hour day. Or be grateful on that press tour. When you have to read off the, or when you get to read off the prompter and you're doing 86 reads. And the reads are so you can dress up in the costume and all that other shit. Like, that's, that's kind of more where I'm at. That's a great approach to life. How did you develop this philosophy? Is this? Dude, I'm not supposed to be here. Like, I'm from fucking West Newbury, Massachusetts. I'm not supposed to be here. And, and that's another thing. There's not a day that doesn't go by where I look at someone I love and connect with and be like, man, what a life. I, I understand how lucky I am.

• 1:53:09Speaker 02

  And I understand I have been awarded more opportunity than one human being should get. And it's, it's, um, from what I've tried to boil down to it, the best way to honor that opportunity is to do your best to try to live a good life. And a good life isn't, it's, that's almost like pain. Everybody's perspective of a good life is different. I've come up with core values and I try to live by those. Fuck, I'm human, I ain't perfect. But like, again, if, when I go into the dirt, I feel as if I didn't waste it. And I don't mean grind, like, homeboy from Nvidia, that's, that's a grind. And I think a lot of him, there's fear there, but also a lot of, a lot of that effort, he

• 1:53:53Speaker 02

  loves it. And that's what, that's what an ideal life to him is about. And if he goes in the ground working 70 hours a week, he'll go in with a smile on his face. You know, I just want to go in when it's my time. I want to know that I honored the luck I was given by not fucking squandering it, by not wasting it. Hmm. And that doesn't mean grind to a monetary number. It just means live a fulfilled life where the sleep is sound, the love is real, and every day you're driven with curiosity and purpose. And I don't know what the fuck that is. And it could change. Man, I thought I was born to be a WWE superstar. And then the elbows start hurting a little bit and you're like, ah, man, I'm born to be a storyteller.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  And then you realize that like, I'm not in control of any of that shit. That's just luck. That's somebody being like, I liked him in this, put him in that. Yes, no problem.

• 1:54:44Joe Rogan?

  Well, I think a key factor you're talking about here is gratitude.

• 1:54:47Speaker 02

  I was born to, to honor the luck that I've been given.

• 1:54:50Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:50Speaker 02

  And just try to do my best to live a full life. Like, that's it.

• 1:54:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and that, having gratitude about the life that you live and being happy. God, it's so hard, but so important.

• 1:55:01Speaker 02

  And it, it, it's tough when you use that word, cause it's such a...

• 1:55:05Joe Rogan?

  I know.

• 1:55:05Speaker 02

  Such a buzz. Think outside the box, like, but nah, man, like...

• 1:55:09Joe Rogan?

  It's a real word, though.

• 1:55:10Speaker 02

  Real thanks.

• 1:55:12Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:55:13Speaker 02

  Is hard.

• 1:55:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  Cause you have to be thankful for the suck, for the pain. You have to be thankful for the lesson, for the journey, like, and these are, again, these are all, like, slangy, hashtag-y terms. I don't know what the fuck else to call it, so I'm just calling it what it is.

• 1:55:28Joe Rogan?

  They're being, they've been co-opted by people to just sort of bullshit and use those words, but the reality of those words is strong. It's very powerful.

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  It's like, like grind. Grind is another hashtag word, you know, but like, there is, there is some realism to it. But that, that, from what I've figured it out thus far, that's my path. And, uh, when the facts change, so does my opinion. So, we could come back here in a few years and I, I'd be on some other shit, but right now, that's kind of where I'm at.

• 1:55:54Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's such a, the, the, the gratitude word has been really co-opted by goofy people, unfortunately. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. It's the real word.

• 1:56:04Speaker 02

  And, and if, if, if the word makes you feel weird, come up with your own word.

• 1:56:08Joe Rogan?

  Right, thanks, yeah, just having thanks.

• 1:56:11Speaker 02

  Cause I, I'm, I'm with you there, some, some words make me feel gross.

• 1:56:15Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  Just about how overused they've been, but like, I, I can't stray away from that one, yeah.

• 1:56:20Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I mean, we talk about gratitude all the time. We're, we're always like, talking about how we're living the dream.

• 1:56:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:26Joe Rogan?

  Like, just being happy.

• 1:56:27Speaker 02

  Cause what are we doing? Just shooting the shit.

• 1:56:28Joe Rogan?

  I know.

• 1:56:30Speaker 02

  People are paying attention.

• 1:56:31Joe Rogan?

  I know.

• 1:56:31Speaker 02

  The fuck you guys doing?

• 1:56:32Joe Rogan?

  A lot, a lot of people.

• 1:56:34Speaker 02

  If you're still with us, I can't believe it. This is great.

• 1:56:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was thinking, I was talking to my buddy the other day, Peter Shore, the owner of The Comedy Store, and I was telling him about how, just a few weeks ago, because now that I have a place that I like, and a car that I like, and a job and everything, everything's finally, it appears how I have always considered what the dream is, that, I was saying to my buddy the other day, who I came up with, who I really started with, and I'm talking about like, 14, 16 hour days at The Comedy Store. I'd answer the phone at 11 a.m., because back then they didn't even have a website. Hello, you want tickets tonight? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Work all night, put on the t-shirt at 8 p.m., tear tickets and check IDs,

• 1:57:21Speaker 03

  until 2:30 in the morning. So, I would hit overtime by like Wednesday or Thursday, but they couldn't pay overtime because The Comedy Store in 2007 was half to quarter empty. Anyway, so they would cut my hours, and I was paying $400 a month to sleep on my buddy's couch in his living room. And he had a bedroom, and my other buddy, Matty, had a bedroom. But Sandy was like, you know, he was like, the apartment was registered in his name. And I mean, terrible couch, terrible setup. I'd have to go through one of their bedrooms to go to the bathroom. So if you have to pee in the middle of the night, you're kind of tiptoeing through, you know what I mean?

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  Don't know what you're gonna see.

• 1:57:59Speaker 03

  You don't want to make noise, you don't know what you're gonna see, whatever. And I was talking to Matt a month or so ago, and I go, I think I still owe Sandy a little bit of rent money, because I just simply didn't have it back then. Isn't that crazy? He goes, you do. He mentioned it last time, because we were talking about how successful you are.

• 1:58:18Speaker 02

  There's an accountant right there.

• 1:58:19Speaker 03

  So I Venmo'd him, out of nowhere. I haven't even, we haven't even talked since pre-pandemic. He's got a family, I'm out here, this, that. I Venmo'd him a thousand bucks, out of nowhere. And I go, 2007 rent money, as the memo part of it. And he hits me up saying thanks, and we're communicating. And then I remembered that at one point, I couldn't even afford the $400 a month. Uh, for the couch. And there was another comedian that was a door guy at the store that did have the 400 a month because he was getting help from his parents. So I got downgraded to a beanbag for like a month or two. I was sleeping on actual. Oh, just horrendous. Exactly. A sore back for two months, just in pain all the time, but doing what I loved.

• 1:59:04Speaker 03

  And so much of what you're saying about enjoying the process, enjoy what you're doing. Because I really did back then. And I think about that now more. I've been thinking about that beanbag and that couch and that living room more than ever the last few months, you know? It's like that's, talking about gratitude, it's like those are the things that, that's who you are, is enjoying that process, you know? And making the best out of it.

• 1:59:31Speaker 02

  And in, in, in my case of a similar story, and from what I'm hearing from you is like you, you wanted to be there. You, you were not going to give up the beanbag.

• 1:59:39Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:39Speaker 02

  There's, there's a lot of folks out there who are put behind the eight ball and really have to dig themselves out of a trench. When I moved out to Venice and I was working at Gold's, I was sleeping in the parking lot in my 91 Continental. And everybody's like, oh, man, you were homeless? I'm like, no, no, it was choice. It was my choice.

• 1:59:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  I didn't want to leave. My old man had a room for me. Nobody ever leaves West Newbury. My dad was like, yo, come back. You got a roof over your head. You get some fucked up job over here. You don't have to pay rent. So I had choice. I stayed in the car because I wanted to.

• 2:00:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:07Speaker 02

  Life was great. I got to see like the bodybuilders of the 2000s. I got to train at the gym and shower at the gym and The Rock came through. There's like a old picture of me and The Rock somewhere where I'm in my Gold Gym Club Store shirt and he's fucking doing this one. And like, I got to see all these people and it was fucking cool. And I, I wouldn't have left if they took the car away and I had to sleep in the parking lot. Like I, I was by choice, you know? You, you slept on the beanbag because you wanted to be there.

• 2:00:35Speaker 03

  And the fun fact is-

• 2:00:36Speaker 02

  Look at that. That's, uh, that's, that's, that's, this is me in the background, right there. No, no, keep that. Hold on, I'm taking the phones off. I'm going in. Yeah. That's me right there. He had just taken a photo with me. And that's me.

• 2:00:48Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:00:49Speaker 02

  That's DJ.

• 2:00:50Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:00:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:53Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 2:00:54Speaker 02

  That's 1999.

• 2:00:56Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:00:57Speaker 02

  Fucking rock was white hot, selling out every place, probably Staples Center, Anaheim, coming in to press some weights.

• 2:01:04Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:06Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 2:01:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. What a, what a, that, so, like, that's where the perspective is, exists.

• 2:01:12Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  Cause I shouldn't have even been in the fucking club store selling candy bars. I should be, you know, in, in, in West Newbury, doing what everyone else does. Like, that's the, that's the tale. You know? And I'm not. So, I'm grateful for it.

• 2:01:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of people out there on beanbags right now, listening to this. You need to hear-

• 2:01:31Speaker 02

  Stay on the beanbag, man.

• 2:01:33Joe Rogan?

  Stay on that beanbag, sleeping in that car.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  24 more hours, who knows? 24 more hours, something could happen.

• 2:01:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and the, the success would be so much sweeter. All so much sweeter if you do it that way. I mean, if you were a trust fund kid, and you had plenty of money, and your parents gave you a hundred grand a year to go out and pursue your dreams, and they paid for your apartment, and... This episode is brought to you by NOCO. You're miles from home, you turn the key, nothing. Dead battery. Normally, that means finding another car, someone willing to give you a jump, and dealing with old jumper cables. But what if you didn't need any of that? Keep a NOCO portable jump starter in your glove box, and jump start your car yourself. No cables, no second vehicle, no waiting for help. It also works as a power bank, and has a built-in LED flashlight.

• 2:02:20Joe Rogan?

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• 2:03:03Joe Rogan?

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• 2:03:32Speaker 02

  Man, you know, I don't wanna fuck on anybody's flex. You're right, but at the same time,

• 2:03:38Speaker 02

  if, if you understand that, right? If you understand I was put on the board ahead of everybody else, I was born on third base. Again, that shit's beyond your control.

• 2:03:47Joe Rogan?

  Right, but I think you need some failure to understand that.

• 2:03:50Speaker 02

  So if you're grateful for what you have, you will swing and miss and be accountable.

• 2:03:57Joe Rogan?

  Right, cuz you can't really control what you have.

• 2:04:00Speaker 02

  You can't control where you start.

• 2:04:01Joe Rogan?

  Right. You can't control your start, you control where you're going.

• 2:04:05Speaker 02

  So if.

• 2:04:05Joe Rogan?

  Or how you respond along the way.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and the kind of person you are to somebody who was born on third base, I think also will dictate your perception from the, from the eyes of others. If you feel you are greater than, fuck, we're all human beings, dog, like, nobody greater than nobody.

• 2:04:25Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:04:26Speaker 02

  You know, everybody's out there struggling and, and all of us, especially in this area of the pale blue dot, we all believe in capitalism, so, so the fact that you were born on third base means everybody's doing their job and the whole system's working. Like, you can't think you're, when you start getting the like, I, I never use this word, I feel bad even saying it, deserve. When you start getting the deserve mentality of I deserve this, fuck it, what the fuck do you deserve, man?

• 2:04:50Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 2:04:52Speaker 02

  You know, have you earned this? Have you earned it? And if you feel as if you haven't, what steps, steps are you gonna take to earn it? If you're born on third and you feel bad about it, take some steps to feel good about it. I don't know what that is. But if you're born on third and you feel you deserve it, to me, that's fucking sprinting through a minefield, dog.

• 2:05:11Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that's not a good path.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  And I don't, I don't ever, I don't ever wanna fuck with somebody who turns like a hundred thousand into ten million or a million into a billion. That's good investing. That's, I mean, that, that's the system, you, you, you learned how to work the system. It's just in the process, if you think. You think you're better than? Yeah, murky waters, man. In, in, in my perspective.

• 2:05:34Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's just a terrible perspective, anyway.

• 2:05:37Speaker 02

  Like you're, cause it's all, it's all kinda fugazi, like it's all just paper IOUs or whatever. It's just digital ones and zeros. Like, are, if it melts down, are you really better than anybody? You know what?

• 2:05:48Joe Rogan?

  A lot of times, it's also a defense mechanism. You know, you pretend that you deserve it. You pretend you're better than other people.

• 2:05:55Speaker 02

  Cause maybe you don't feel enough, or again, everybody's walking through their old mile, but like, I don't feel validated. Or, or I want attention, or I don't know. I don't know, man. I don't know.

• 2:06:05Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 2:06:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was crazy hanging out with Steph McMahon and how human she was and hilarious and human. I was telling her, cause I was telling her like, man, you know, I always wanted to be a pro wrestler when I was a kid. And then I realized I wasn't gonna be tall enough and I wasn't gonna be big enough. And then lately, I've been meeting these guys and they're not that huge. And when I tell them that, they go, huh, look at me, you know, Sami Zayn, hilarious guy. Literally told me that. He's like, you could have done it. I'm like, God, I guess I could have actually done it.

• 2:06:35Joe Rogan?

  You could probably still do it.

• 2:06:36Speaker 03

  And I was telling Steph that. She goes, do you think you can do a little something? I go, I can hit a superkick on anybody at any time, from any place.

• 2:06:43Joe Rogan?

  What's a superkick?

• 2:06:44Speaker 03

  It's Shawn Michaels' old finishing move. You would literally, you would faint from laughter, cause you actually know how to fucking kick through a wall. But it's a, it's a, it's a kick and you.

• 2:06:57Speaker 02

  And the goal is not to hit the guy.

• 2:06:59Speaker 03

  Right, exactly. Come real close.

• 2:07:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:07:02Speaker 03

  And she's so cool. She goes, oh, that'd be funny if next time, you know, I'm with Triple H, you just superkick me out of nowhere. I'll sell it. I'll fall down. The whole thing. I'm like, I know. Stephanie, this is crazy.

• 2:07:13Speaker 02

  There we go. There it is.

• 2:07:15Speaker 03

  That's a perfect example.

• 2:07:16Speaker 02

  Man, this is, you're on it.

• 2:07:18Joe Rogan?

  Okay, so a guy flies through the air and you kinda catch him?

• 2:07:21Speaker 02

  That's just one example. Like, that's a, that's a really good example right here. But it could be from, it could be from standing, anywhere. It's just a, pretty much that high, that high.

• 2:07:29Joe Rogan?

  You can do that?

• 2:07:30Speaker 03

  I can do that. I can.

• 2:07:31Joe Rogan?

  Are you flexible like that?

• 2:07:33Speaker 03

  I'm flexible. At least I think I am. I don't know. We'll see. I wasn't throwing, I was throwing a rock at a tree the other day for the first time in forever and I'm coming up about 15 feet shorter than ever before. There.

• 2:07:45Speaker 02

  That's what she looks like.

• 2:07:46Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 2:07:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:07:47Joe Rogan?

  Whoa. That looks real.

• 2:07:50Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:07:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's on there.

• 2:07:51Joe Rogan?

  It's really hit.

• 2:07:52Speaker 02

  It's on there.

• 2:07:52Speaker 03

  Two of the best right there.

• 2:07:55Speaker 02

  It's on there.

• 2:07:56Speaker 03

  Yep. You really got that kind of flexibility? Yep.

• 2:07:59Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 2:07:59Speaker 03

  You have to slap your leg at the same time and it makes everybody actually think that you did it. Like if I did it to somebody, you'd be like, dude, you just fucking kicked them. Cause slap the leg, right? Like stomping on the ground when you punch.

• 2:08:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Slide a hand.

• 2:08:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

• 2:08:13Speaker 02

  There's magic in the business, man.

• 2:08:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. There is. I wanna see you out there. Hey, I wrestled with my pillow for like eight hours a day as a kid. I would do the entrances, I would record off of the cassette player. Remember how you used it after?

• 2:08:26Speaker 02

  Dude, I had a whole, we had a whole league in our basement.

• 2:08:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:30Speaker 02

  I didn't need the pillows because I had four brothers. We had belts, a league, personas, like, and in one persona, I would get my ass kicked all the time. And then there was one persona that could not fucking lose. Like, we kept standings and stuff.

• 2:08:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's.

• 2:08:44Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:08:44Speaker 02

  I don't know, man, I don't know.

• 2:08:46Speaker 03

  That's amazing. My brothers and sisters were all much older, but we had a music class teacher in my grade school that didn't give a fuck about his job. He would just sit in the corner and play piano the whole time and let the kids do whatever we wanted. And again, we had entrance music, we were all different people all the time. We'd run it back again, the entire forty-five minutes, jumping off of desks, cabinets, chairs. It's crazy how many injuries didn't happen. It's amazing how resilient, uh, kids can be when we were that.

• 2:09:18Speaker 02

  The energy of youth, just bulletproof.

• 2:09:20Speaker 03

  God.

• 2:09:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:21Speaker 03

  It doesn't make sense how arms and legs and heads and necks weren't broken. You also don't weigh that much back then. Yeah. That's a big part of it.

• 2:09:29Speaker 02

  Man, he's so full of energy.

• 2:09:31Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:09:32Speaker 02

  Man, I can tell I'm getting old because I can be like, is that chair okay? I'm gonna be sitting for a while, am I gonna be alright? Is everything gonna be good? I'm like, oh, man, this bed's gonna kill me.

• 2:09:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:09:42Speaker 02

  Just laying down like this, the beanbag, oh my god.

• 2:09:44Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:09:45Speaker 02

  I'd spend four hours in that thing, you have to cart me off.

• 2:09:47Speaker 03

  I think I'd just sleep on the ground rather than the beanbag.

• 2:09:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, back then, it seemed like the better option.

• 2:09:54Speaker 02

  It was the better option.

• 2:09:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Probably, that's hilarious, though. Yeah. Have you talked to them about possibly doing something? Uh, I mean, no, not exactly. At one point, there was a little, a little chatter, but. Come on, dude, I think you can come up with an insane character. Royal Rumble's right around the corner, I have big shoes to fill over here.

• 2:10:17Speaker 02

  Sturdy entrance, we need bodies.

• 2:10:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. I Show Speed did a good job at that.

• 2:10:23Speaker 02

  Man, he got drilled out of his boots.

• 2:10:26Speaker 03

  He took, uh, the streamer, famous streamer, internet guy. He took what's called a bump from hell. He got speared at the, was that the rumble?

• 2:10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was.

• 2:10:39Joe Rogan?

  That guy, he does some wild shit.

• 2:10:41Speaker 02

  He does.

• 2:10:42Joe Rogan?

  He got in the cage with Dan, uh, the hangman hooker.

• 2:10:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he's, he's like, he's game for anything.

• 2:10:48Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:48Speaker 02

  He has like, um, like, uh, kinesthetic awareness, like, he's, he's obviously an athlete.

• 2:10:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:55Speaker 02

  And he's brave, like, look at this shit. Watch his mother, just leave screen. See ya. Oh, man.

• 2:11:03Joe Rogan?

  Oh, my god.

• 2:11:04Speaker 03

  You can't fake that.

• 2:11:06Joe Rogan?

  Oh, my god.

• 2:11:06Speaker 02

  But, like, you also have to, the reason that looks so good, a lot of that is because of Braun, but also, a lot of that is because of I Show Speed. He committed to the fall and really tried to fall with snappin', with quickness. Like, he's, he's good, man. He really is good. And, like you said, like, I've seen a lot of the other stuff he does. He, he does well. He'll get in there and mess around, you know?

• 2:11:28Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah. Well, he really sparred with Dan Hooker, and Dan beat the shit out of him, but he hung in there.

• 2:11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:33Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's just...

• 2:11:34Speaker 02

  Crazy enough to try, you know?

• 2:11:35Joe Rogan?

  It's also interesting, these YouTube guys, they're just becoming famous. And there was no avenue for them before. You know, they would've had to have been cast in a TV show or become something...

• 2:11:47Speaker 02

  With limited spots?

• 2:11:48Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and now they're doing it completely on their own and becoming huge. I mean, he's got like 50 million Instagram followers or something crazy.

• 2:11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and a bunch of content and a bunch of revenue to match that, and like...

• 2:11:59Joe Rogan?

  And always working. Always doing something, puts himself out there.

• 2:12:03Speaker 02

  Those guys hustle. And it's all, all the content creators out there... People don't understand the hours that they're. They they may end up getting some financial reward, but when you break it down to hourly wage, they're working 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. Like, they don't stop because it's they're a lot of the content they make will have short shelf life. It's they're not they're not essentially putting Gone with the Wind out in the universe. Like, it's you got you're only as good as your next one, not the your last one or the one you did. It's like you're only as good as what you're doing in five minutes from now.

• 2:12:37Joe Rogan?

  And if you drop off the map, someone will replace you like that.

• 2:12:40Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 2:12:40Joe Rogan?

  There's so many fucking streamers. There's so many people that are doing content.

• 2:12:44Speaker 02

  And they they work hard. They do. They work hard. And even even the the ones where it seems like a man

• 2:12:51Speaker 02

  to a perspective of like, I don't understand this, it's still the effort that goes into that. And it's not just what you saw. It's like, OK, you got to have a repeat performance and then you got to keep coming and keep coming and keep coming. Like, I do a movie and, like I said, it's out in 18 months. In 18 months, they've already put out 10,000 videos.

• 2:13:07Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  You know, like, it's it's bananas.

• 2:13:10Joe Rogan?

  It is interesting that nobody saw that coming, too. Nobody ever thought that that was going to be a thing.

• 2:13:15Speaker 02

  I just think it's because we get so used to stuff. We get so used to consuming in a certain way. When something is new for us, it's like, ah, man, I don't know if that's going to take off. But there are young people who are experiencing everything at the same time and like, no, this is cooler.

• 2:13:31Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:13:31Speaker 02

  It's way easier to do this.

• 2:13:32Joe Rogan?

  Also, he's really young. And when you start young, there's not a lot of expectations on you.

• 2:13:37Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:13:38Joe Rogan?

  You you can kind of just do whatever you want. And if it works, great, just keep doing it.

• 2:13:42Speaker 02

  Young and courageous, too. Like, good, just go for it.

• 2:13:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:46Joe Rogan?

  That's it's it's also a great example for other people that that are thinking like, I'm kind of entertaining. I just don't have an avenue. Let me just start making videos.

• 2:13:55Speaker 02

  You got a phone.

• 2:13:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:56Speaker 02

  You got a chance.

• 2:13:57Joe Rogan?

  Isn't that crazy? That's all you have to do is have a phone. It's nuts. You see the videos where he was sprinting with Ashton Forbes, you know, that super jacked guy? That does that morning routine that everybody made fun of? Cause he has this like morning routine where he dunks his face in water and then he, someone hands him his gold watch and he puts it on. It's like really kinda silly.

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:17Joe Rogan?

  You know, and he had a whole series of races with him because he couldn't believe that this YouTuber guy could beat him. Cause he's like this fucking super jacked, ripped guy who, a lot of his online content is him running and he just looks like a force of nature. And I Show Speed beat him like three times in these races, but he didn't wanna, believe that he lost, so he wanted to do it again. Let's do it again, let's do it again. And I Show Speed's talking shit to him. He did it again. So, see if you can find it, it's very funny. It's very funny because when you look at the guy, you're like, oh, this guy looks like he could run like a horse.

• 2:14:53Joe Rogan?

  And I Show Speed is actually faster than him. I think he-

• 2:14:56Speaker 00

  He sprinted an actual Olympic sprinter. I mean, he started fucking around a little bit, but he held his own.

• 2:15:02Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 2:15:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:15:04Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy. He was like right there with an Olympic sprinter. That's nuts.

• 2:15:08Speaker 00

  I think he won the gold, the guy that he raced.

• 2:15:09Joe Rogan?

  Really? That's, he's like right next to him. That's crazy. Like, and he's not even fucking training like that guy is. Imagine if he was? Like, that fucking guy, if he wanted to like fully invest himself into sprinting. A man- He's only what?

• 2:15:27Speaker 00

  Twenty, twenty years old.

• 2:15:28Joe Rogan?

  That's wild. Wow, really? Imagine if that kid fully invested in that and then became an Olympic gold medalist as well.

• 2:15:36Speaker 02

  So, that's, that's where, that's where my mind goes as well.

• 2:15:41Joe Rogan?

  It seems like you can.

• 2:15:42Speaker 02

  But also, why?

• 2:15:44Joe Rogan?

  Why not? Cause it'll make his streams even bigger.

• 2:15:48Speaker 02

  Will it?

• 2:15:49Joe Rogan?

  I don't know, I mean-

• 2:15:49Speaker 02

  Or will sprinting against a gold medalist, getting in the cage with a fighter, getting in the ring with a champion, uh, going to that guy's house and, and besting him at his own thing? Like, he should keep doing that.

• 2:16:02Joe Rogan?

  Mmm.

• 2:16:02Speaker 02

  He shouldn't, he shouldn't go into one, the lane he's in- I think he's doing pretty well.

• 2:16:08Joe Rogan?

  Right, it's almost better losing to the fastest man alive by that much.

• 2:16:12Speaker 02

  Or like, so I can tell by watching that, like, I love potential. And you see that and you're like, oh my god, potential.

• 2:16:19Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:16:19Speaker 02

  This guy could, he could win it all.

• 2:16:21Joe Rogan?

  Find a video of him sprinting against that Ashton guy. Cause it's kind of wild to see.

• 2:16:26Speaker 02

  For what? This guy's got the world by the nuts.

• 2:16:29Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:16:29Speaker 02

  He should, he should do what he's doing, exactly what he's doing.

• 2:16:32Speaker 03

  I only know him from that appearance at the Royal Rumble. Like, he got booked on the Rumble because he has a big following. I'm watching the Rumble, I go, who's this iShowSpeed guy? And I go, wow, that kid took a hell of a bump.

• 2:16:44Joe Rogan?

  Now, look at this Ashton Forbes guy. Now, look at the way this guy's built.

• 2:16:49Speaker 02

  Oh my.

• 2:16:52Joe Rogan?

  He's talking shit while he's running.

• 2:16:54Speaker 02

  Oh, man!

• 2:16:55Joe Rogan?

  And he fell. He's yelling.

• 2:16:57Speaker 02

  Forty million people, is that right? The number of views in the corner, forty million?

• 2:17:01Joe Rogan?

  Unbelievable. Wow.

• 2:17:04Speaker 02

  Oh, man, look at that.

• 2:17:07Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, they raced a bunch of times.

• 2:17:14Speaker 02

  And the, the other guy, didn't that other guy, he played football, right?

• 2:17:18Speaker 00

  Not in the NFL, but I think like college football or something.

• 2:17:21Speaker 02

  Look at this fucking size of him too. The other guy's fucking super jacked. Like, that's his whole thing, his online content, is him running, being super jacked. And he has to deal with iShowSpeed talking shit to him. And he's saying like, play some of this.

• 2:17:35Speaker 04

  The first one I slipped. Second one, you barely beat me, let's run it again. Well, I gotta beat you three times.

• 2:17:42Speaker 02

  See, see, when I see that, right?

• 2:17:52Joe Rogan?

  That's hilarious, he's talking so much shit.

• 2:17:56Speaker 02

  So I see this and be like, this kid should be a wrestler.

• 2:17:59Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:17:59Speaker 02

  Because he is athletic and he can talk shit and back it up. My god, this kid would, he would be a twenty time champion, whatever. No, he should do this.

• 2:18:08Joe Rogan?

  Are they running barefoot on the fucking concrete?

• 2:18:11Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 2:18:11Speaker 00

  They have shoes on.

• 2:18:13Joe Rogan?

  Oh, really?

• 2:18:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:16Speaker 00

  That'd be a bad, bad decision.

• 2:18:24Joe Rogan?

  That was pretty close.

• 2:18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he started before.

• 2:18:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Started before.

• 2:18:33Speaker 02

  Like, he should, he should be doing that.

• 2:18:34Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:35Speaker 02

  But like, you see the sprinting potential, I see the WWE potential. He should do neither. He should just do that.

• 2:18:40Joe Rogan?

  Right. Well, he's already done WWE. I guarantee you they'd probably want him to do it again.

• 2:18:45Speaker 02

  Oh my, I, I think he did a thing, he just went to like the Performance Center and did a thing. And like,

• 2:18:50Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:50Speaker 02

  He's really good.

• 2:18:51Joe Rogan?

  Really good.

• 2:18:52Speaker 02

  He's got great instincts, he's got great timing.

• 2:18:54Joe Rogan?

  That's amazing.

• 2:18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:55Joe Rogan?

  And he's only 20.

• 2:18:58Speaker 00

  There's now, like, this is like full, multi-camera, really good shooting. And he's, Speed vs. Pros, I think, cause he's kinda doing that idea you just said.

• 2:19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, like where he goes, he goes to people's, uh,

• 2:19:10Joe Rogan?

  Look at that, 46.2 million subscribers on YouTube. That's wild.

• 2:19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think, I think like he should just do that, you know, whatever, whatever he's doing.

• 2:19:20Joe Rogan?

  I mean, he's obviously doing it. Does he have like a team behind him that's editing all this shit now? Probably. Oh, look at that, he's learning how to do flips. Oh, that's crazy. So he's really in it.

• 2:19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think it's just like, show up for a few days and then go on to the next discipline.

• 2:19:36Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:19:36Speaker 02

  So he, he does everything.

• 2:19:40Joe Rogan?

  Smart. Very smart.

• 2:19:42Speaker 00

  He spent all summer going to a city every day. Everything was livestreamed for like 24 hours straight. They'd go to a city, show up, what's the coolest thing they do in the city?

• 2:19:49Speaker 02

  And do it?

• 2:19:50Speaker 00

  Do it, and then go to the next city the next day.

• 2:19:52Joe Rogan?

  Like, what kinda shit was he doing?

• 2:19:53Speaker 00

  Go to the fair, ride all rides, try all the games. There's a bunch of kids following him around. Next day, they were here in Austin going to Terry Black's. I think he went and did stand-up with Mark Norman in like, in New York City.

• 2:20:05Speaker 02

  Like, that's a, that's cool, that's cool, man.

• 2:20:07Speaker 00

  He went on stage for a second.

• 2:20:08Joe Rogan?

  That's wild, that he's so young, too. Only 20?

• 2:20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:12Joe Rogan?

  That talented?

• 2:20:13Speaker 02

  And just, just brave and courageous and going for it. Like, that's, regardless of what you and I think, he's doing exactly what he should be doing. You know, he should just keep doing that.

• 2:20:21Joe Rogan?

  And obviously not getting in his own way.

• 2:20:23Speaker 02

  Not, not at all.

• 2:20:25Joe Rogan?

  All the things you're saying, like, capitalizing on every opportunity.

• 2:20:28Speaker 02

  Story yet to be told.

• 2:20:29Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:29Speaker 02

  Story, it's still got, still got a lot of life left.

• 2:20:31Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:33Joe Rogan?

  A lot of life left.

• 2:20:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:34Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:35Speaker 02

  But we'll see. He's doing, he's doing great so far.

• 2:20:37Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, amazing.

• 2:20:40Joe Rogan?

  I think we wrap this up. It was a fucking awesome podcast. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

• 2:20:45Speaker 02

  It is a real, a real big opportunity for you to have me on here because the WWE folks that you have had, I think I'm still, I only got one date left, but I still think I'm the active one. I hope this experience has been good for you guys.

• 2:21:01Joe Rogan?

  It's been amazing.

• 2:21:02Speaker 02

  I hope you have more of the guys and gals from us in on your show.

• 2:21:06Joe Rogan?

  Absolutely.

• 2:21:06Speaker 02

  Every one of them's got a great story to tell.

• 2:21:08Joe Rogan?

  Absolutely, absolutely. And I think your philosophy is contagious and I think it's really good for people to hear and I think there's a lot of young people out there that are really going to benefit from a lot of the things you said because I think it's rock solid.

• 2:21:19Speaker 02

  That means a lot coming from you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

• 2:21:22Joe Rogan?

  Tony, you're the man. Awesome. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you.

• 2:21:25Speaker 02

  Just call it.

• 2:21:26Joe Rogan?

  Bye, everybody.

• 2:21:26Speaker 02

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